Shackles of the Past
by Kirityu Ryukaro
Summary: Midoriya's quirkless. Shinsou has a "villainous" quirk. Their parents are villains, or don't really care about them. They had no friends, until they met each other by accident at preschool. They finally thought things were going to get better. Thing's just tumbled down one after another.
1. Chapter 1 - Friendship

Midoriya Izuku never really had friends.

His father, Midoriya Hisashi, was a villain. A fire breathing villain, that went by the name of Flash Fire. A powerful fighter and arsonist, it had taken the combination of Endeavor, Best Jeanist and Hawks to take him down.

He didn't know his father was a villain. His mother never told him, but he had noticed her breakdown when his father was been carted away in a fire resistant police car.

He was a smart child, an empathetic child. He could tell when someone was feeling sad, when they needed help, and would try his best to comfort them.

He had noticed his mother's change in emotion, and despite only being three, he had tried to comfort her. She had ended up spilling the entire story to him. He himself had declared Midoriya useless, and had ditched them in favour of being a villain.

She had grown distant. She never really acknowledged Midoiriya, blankly looking at the boy as she brought him home from preschool, empty inside as she just went through the muscle movement of doing daily everyday mundane tasks.

He understood. Her own deteriorating mentality over her husband had taken over. She didn't, couldn't, wasn't able do anything to stop her son's classmates from bullying the poor boy who was just too nice to everyone. All that was getting to her head. And he didn't blame her.

Midoriya was short, way shorter than the rest of his peers. No one wanted to befriend him, saying that it wasn't cool to be his friend. They claimed that he was too nice, too cheerful, just too happy and smiley in general. He was too talkative, too willing to make friends. They said with that attitude, he couldn't be a hero.

He wasn't weak by any standards, given he was still a toddler. But no one really cared about that. He was short, thus he was not worthy of being friends. Simply, childish logic, but it still stung all the same.

_It would get better, _he told himself, _eventually._

It didn't.

Midoriya Izuku was declared quirkless at the age of four.

They punched him, kicked him, used their quirks against him. The teachers didn't stop them, and occasionally Midoriya did overhear them, and even the caretakers had decided to let the children do whatever, as long as they didn't end up killing the boy or causing long term damage. _They were just roughhousing, after all_, they said, _children do that all the time._

They called him Deku. They called him weak, useless. That he wouldn't amount to anything because he was simply quirkless and powerless.

Then, they found out that his father was Flash Fire, when a teacher accidentally spoke too loudly and they all heard him from outside their classroom.

Then they said the best he could do was become a villain so that when they became heroes, they could beat him down easily.

_They didn't know what they were saying, _Midoriya reasoned, _It made them feel better about themselves._

He was okay with that.

But Midoriya also wanted to prove them wrong.

He knew he was quirkless. He needed to somehow even the playing field. He had been analysing quirks since he was young, but all that knowledge was useless in a fight if he was hit in an instance.

He slowly learnt how to read people's movements. Every twitch, every blink, how they walked, how they talked, how they slouched or lay down. He needed to learn, to keep up with the other super powered children he called his classmates. He didn't have a choice if he wanted to be a hero.

* * *

Shinsou Hitoshi was a scared, introverted child.

His father was a villain. That wasn't bad enough. He had inherited his father's dark eye shadows, and his insomnia.

He wanted to be a hero. He wanted to help other people.

His classmates said he looked like a villain, and because of that, _he should be one_.

Then he turned four, and his quirk came.

A brainwashing quirk. _Just like his father's._

His mother was nice to up, right up until he manifested his quirk. A combination of his father's brainwashing quirk, where he has to make physical contact to brainwash a person, and his mother's quirk, a minor echolocation quirk. She never did anything against him, but the small ounce of love she once showed him had disappeared into an emotionless husk. She had turned in on herself, often ignoring her son in favour for wallowing in her room. She pushed a bowl of food in front of his face, before locking the door and leaving the poor child to eat on his own, in silence, haunted by the muffled tears.

Instead of just bullying him, his classmates now steered clear of him, leaving a metre wide radius around the poor purple haired toddler like he had some kind of contagious disease.

They blamed everything on him. A missing pencil, a broken lunch box, two children getting into a fight, a torn piece of paper. They said it was him. Or, if they were caught in the act, claim that Shinsou was brainwashing them to do it. The caretakers couldn't do anything. They had no proof that Shinsou do it, unless you counted twenty toddlers speaking against him as proof. And as the damage wasn't too great, they dropped it, but even the adults kept a wide berth from Shinsou, avoiding him as much as possible.

Shinsou just wanted to be a hero.

Was that too much to ask for?

He didn't want to be defined by who his dad was. He didn't even meet him before. He didn't ask for his quirk to be so similar to the villain's.

Why couldn't anyone treat him like he was himself?

* * *

"Alright, the neighbouring preschool had been attacked by villains, so for the next week or so, the children will be attending other schools around the area. We will also be taking in some of the children. Please welcome them!"

A group of adults ushered the new children into the room, and most of the students looked on in interest at the new kids.

All except one. Midoriya Izuku. He sat in a corner, quietly observing everyone.

The children were given time to interact with each other, and most of the toddlers that Midoriya knew just opted to forget about him, interested in the new students and their quirks instead.

Midoriya felt some kind of dark, haunting aura from somewhere. He turned, seeing a fluffy, purple haired boy, sitting in the opposite corner with his legs tucked into his chest, his arms resting on his knees as he placed his chin on his forearms, solemnly looking at everyone.

It felt familiar, and he didn't know why.

Then he realised that it was exactly how he felt.

The other boy was reclusive, he had been shunned, and ignored by everyone. They treated him like he didn't belong, and after so long of hearing it, he himself had begun to believe it.

That feeling was suffocating, it was like there were shackles clasped around their neck and wrists and ankles, not letting you go anywhere, leaving you to suffer in silence as everyone went about their day, not even glancing in his direction.

_They're right. I'm quirkless, so I'm useless. But I'm the only one that should have to suffer like that._

Midoriya peeled himself out of his corner, and slowly made his way towards the purple haired boy.

"H-hi..." Midoriya said, stopping in front of the boy.

The boy's head shot up, eyes widening as he realised, that yes, someone was talking to him.

"H...hi?"

"My name is Midoriya Izuku!" Midoriya gave the boy a small smile.

The purple haired boy just looked at him, confused, blinking a few times as he finally registered what Midoriya had said.

"You're…. talking…. to me?" His voice was hoarse, as if he was suffering from a sore throat. In actuality, Shinsou was a stranger to talking. No one ever wanted to hold a conversation with him, and he was fairly sure he wasn't crazy enough to hold conversations with himself. Whatever semblance of speech the young boy had gained before the manifestation of his quirk had deteriorated into a harsh, raspy voice that he had coughed out in pure confusion.

Midoriya crouched down to get at eye level with Shinsou, but someone grabbed his arm, "Ah!"

"Hey, don't reply him! He has a brainwashing quirk! If you respond, he'll brainwash you into doing stuff!" A boy with ash grey hair pulled him away, "He's gonna be a villain when he grows up, so stay away from him! He's bad."

Shinsou flinched.

There is was again. Calling him a villain because of his quirk.

Because he simply had a non-offensive quirk that wasn't flashy as flashy as the rest.

Because he was unlucky enough to inherit all his father's villainous looking traits, and the very quirk that he used to aid his unlawful deed.

He pressed his face into his arms. Midoriya had been the first person to be nice to him in a very long time, but even that had lasted barely a minute before the others had decided to play the hero and _"come to his aid and protect him from the future brainwashing villain"_.

"That doesn't mean he'll use it!" Midoriya protested. "And just because he has a brainwashing quirk, that doesn't mean he'll be a villain!"

Shinsou's face shot up. He was..._defending_ him?!

_But why!? He barely knew him! They told him his quirk! Why was he defending him!? _

Shinsou didn't get it, he was confused, and his head was reeling that someone was actually sticking up for him. For the first time in his life, Shinsou didn't know how to react to the new situation.

_It wouldn't last,_ he told himself, _one way or another, they'll convince him otherwise. He'll turn away._

"Don't you agree he looks like a villain? And his quirk is the same as Controller's, that brainwashing villain!"

"So?" Midoriya shot back, "So what if his quirk is the same as a villain's? Shinsou-kun is his own person!" Midoriya pulled away from the grey haired boy, standing in front of Shinsou and balled his fists, as if to prove his point.

"You should know, don't you!?" A boy who could pull his eyeballs out of his sockets cackled, "Isn't your dad Flash Fire?"

Half of the occupants of the room gasped.

"So? I don't even know him! I didn't even know I had a dad until I knew his last name." Midoriya tried to defend himself, but a boy with rocks for hair suddenly turned his hand into rocks and grabbed the shorter, green haired boy's shoulder, "Look, Deku, your dad's a villain, and you're quirkless! You can't amount to anything in this world! So stop pretending to be the hero, trying to save someone who at least has a quirk, even if it's a villainous one!"

He clenched his fist, and Midoriya bit his lip as he felt pain shoot through his shoulder. The rock boy finally released his hold on Midoriya, and kicked him in the stomach, grinning as he fell down, clutching his stomach as he wheezed.

"It's not a villainous quirk! I'm sure he could be a hero if he wanted to with that quirk!" Midoriya coughed.

Shinsou just looked at Midoriya in shock. He was quirkless, and he was being treated like that? No wonder he thought so highly of every single quirk.

_He said I could be... a hero...?_

"Psh. Don't be ridiculous." The grey haired boy snorted, "It's the perfect villain quirk. He can make anyone steal anything for him, doing anything, and they wouldn't be able to trace it back to him! Have you ever heard of a hero with a brainwashing quirk?"

"Well, Shinsou-kun can be the first! He has an awesome quirk so leave him alone!" Midoriya yelled, his voice squeaking as he yelped, when another boy who could expel smoke "accidentally" coughed into his face.

"Your word doesn't mean anything. You can't even stand up for youself, don't even think about standing up for other people."

"Anyone can be a hero if they try!" Midoriya yelped, tears pooling in his eyes as he tried to glare down his classmates who were starting to crowd around them, all of them jeering and mocking the poor quirkless child.

"Hey, leave him alone. He didn't do anything to you." Shinsou stood up. He didn't know why, but seeing the green haired boy being dragged into his own problem, and him being so willing to stand up for him despite not knowing him, despite everyone saying how he would turn into a villain, just made him want to protect the boy. The way he tried to defend him, believing that Shinsou could be a hero, warmed his heart, even if it was just the tiniest bit.

Scratch that. His heart had completely melted from the sheer conviction he had said that.

He wanted to protect him, protect that naive belief that anyone could be a hero, a belief that had been beaten out of him long before his quirk had even manifested.

His voice, it was quiet, but in that very instant, all the children clammed up.

"Tch." The rock boy snorted, grabbing the boy with grey hair, "Come on. Let's play heroes. Those two losers can just stick with each other." The rest of the children also dispersed, leaving the two shunned children alone in the corner.

And where were the caretakers? They were all outside, talking about the arrangements, and no one was keeping an eye on the children.

Midoriya coughed, and sat up, "Are you okay, Shinsou-kun?"

"Shouldn't I be the one asking if you're okay?" Shinsou asked, confusing piling in his brain. _Were interactions like this normal?_

He sat down in front of Midoriya, shifting to his side as he pat his back as he coughed.

"Well... they were saying mean stuff about you're quirk... which is awesome... your quirk, I mean... not the mean stuff... so I thought..." Midoriya trailed off, scratching his head sheepishly.

Shinsou rubbed his neck, unsure what to say, "Is it... true? That you're... quirkless?"

Midoriya sadly nodded, "Yeah. It's okay if you don't wanna hang out with me... it's my fault that I can't do anything right... "

"I don't mind hanging out. We can be friends."

"Really!?" Midoriya's face lit up like a christmas tree as a large smile stretched across his face. He acted like Shinsou had just offered him the world on the silver platter, when all he did was offer the start of a friendship.

Shinsou couldn't stop himself. He had defended him, and showed him more kindness that anyone ever had, and now he was spouting more self deprecating words. His heart ached for the poor, quirkless boy, who had to suffer under his classmates constant jeering and mocking.

He wanted to protect that smile at all costs. That bright, million watt smile that rivalled the sun.

Shinsou gave a small, much smaller smile in return, but was a small smile nonetheless, "Yeah."

* * *

Two weeks passed by in a flash.

By then, Midoriya practically clung to Shinsou no matter where he went, babbling about something or another.

Shinsou, while he still never spoke much, was almost always seen with a small smile on his face as he listened to Midoriya.

The rest of the children never went near them, in "fear" that Shinsou would brainwash them. Even though the number of children in the room had practically doubled, there was always plenty of space around the duo.

The teachers and caretakers also left them alone. They didn't want to deal with the two most "troublesome children" of the bunch, the "abnormal" ones, the "weird" ones, the ones that "wouldn't amount to anything. They didn't want to be affiliated with a quirkless failure, or a future brainwashing villain.

Shinsou and Midoriya didn't care. They had each other. Their first friend ever. The first person that understood their situation, and liked them for who they were instead of what their quirks were or their family background. The rest of the kids could do whatever they wanted, Shinsou and Midoriya didn't care.

Shinsou gave Midoriya protection from his bullies. His reputation among his own peers was more than enough to drive them away, even if they weren't true. Midoriya defended Shinsou, gave him hope, excitedly explaining all the perks of a brainwashing quirk as a hero.

The duo's friendship had evolved very quickly. When you spend five years of your life being degraded by everyone around you, you end up clinging much more strongly to the first good thing that comes your way. After all, it was infinitely better than anything they had experienced before.

"Midoriya" and "Shinsou-kun" had become "Izu" and "Toshi".

Midoriya was a clingy person. Shinsou had been deprived of anything with a hint of affection aimed at him.

The two were practically family by the time two weeks were up.

* * *

"Ne… Toshi… Do you want to come over for a sleepover?" Midoriya asked. Shinsou's school was already repaired, and they wouldn't be able to see each other for a long time.

"I… never had a sleepover before." Shinsou admitted, rubbing his neck. He hadn't even met Midoriya's mother before, since the normal pick up location for the two groups of children were different.

"She's nice? I mean… she was. Now she ignores me most of the time, but I'm sure she'll be okay with it… if it's no bother to you. If you don't wanna come over that's fine as well. I'm not forcing you or anything, I'm sorry for bothering you…"

Shinsou sighed. Midoriya was way too nice and apologetic for his own good. He seemed to think that everything wrong was his fault.

"I can ask my mom…. but I don't know."

"Alright." Midoriya nodded, before leaning against Shinsou's side as he whipped out a notebook from who knows where.

He flipped it open, and Shinsou caught side of a flash of purple.

"Wait.. .what's that?" He made a grab the notebook, and Midoriya pouted, before snatching the notebook back. "No."

"Come on, Izu. Please?"

Midoriya pouted as he relented, flipping through the pages of his notebook as he came to a stop of a scribble of a person with purple hair. He wore a mask and donned a black jumpsuit, a grey scarf around his neck and random scribbles of purple that Shinsou assumed were hair was sticking all over the place.

"What's this?"

"It's… you…" Midoriya turned away and blushed, "I was watching UA's Sports Day reruns… and I thought your quirk was really similar to this other guy's who had red glowey eyes! Apparently he can erase other people's quirks and it's awesome! It's not flashy, but it's a great quirk. I was thinking… maybe you can use a support item… thingy…. " Midoriya scratched his head.

Shinsou felt his heart clench. The drawing wasn't the best, given it was scribbled by a toddler, but Shinsou appreciated that Midoriya believed that he could be a hero, regardless of what anyone else thought.

He felt something wet on his face.

"Are you... crying?! I'm so sorry I didn't mean to upset you, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry!" Midoriya panicked as he saw tears rolling down Shinsou's face.

"I'm... really happy. Thank you..." Shinsou gave a small smile as he continued staring at the scribble in the notebook.

* * *

Somewhere else, Aizawa Shouta sneezed, and rubbed his nose.

"Oi, you're not getting sick, are you, Shouta? You know how often you overwork yourself." Yamada leaned over the table, where he was drinking some kind of tea.

"I'm not sick. Someone must be talking about me." Shouta wrinkled his nose, taking a huge gulp out of his coffee.

* * *

When Shinsou went home, he asked his mother. She just glanced at him for a second, before retreating to her room.

She didn't care.

He took that as a yes.

He grabbed some clothes and stuffed them in his school bag.

A sleepover sounded really nice.

* * *

"Ne! Toshi!" Midoriya dragged the purple haired boy over to a green haired lady, who wore the same blank look as his own mother. "This is my mom."

"Hi..." Shinsou shyly greeted.

Inko just nodded, as she turned around to head home. Midoriya grabbed Shinsou's hand, as he dragged the confused boy along.

It didn't take long for the trio to get to the Midoriya household, and Inko let the two boys in before closing the door, and retreating into her own room.

"So... what do you wanna do now?" Midoriya asked.

Shinsous shrugged. He had no ideas how sleepovers works besides the... sleep over at someone else's house part.

In the end, the two boys had played heroes. They would take turns calling for help, and the other would run all over the house trying to "rescue" the other. In reality, it was a glorified game of hide and seek. They steered clear of the kitchen though, cause they both knew kitchens were dangerous.

Inko had quickly put together a bowl of rice, some fish and some vegetables for the two boys before she left them alone again, but neither of them minded. They laughed at made silly drawings as they ate. They had each other. That's all they needed.

Midoriya and Shinsou carefully and neatly stacked their bowls and utensils together, before taking a shower and heading off to sleep.

That was also the first time Shinsou had ever gotten any real sleep. His insomnia always kept him awake all night, and he never got any restful sleep that lasted more than an hour or two. Something about Midoriya just made him feel calm, and accepted, and not having to worry about being pushed away.

Shinsou curled up in a ball and lying on the ground that was strewn with pillows and blankets, Midoriya clinging onto his outstretched arm like a koala.

* * *

"Will I ever see you again, Toshi?" Midoriya asked, sadly. Today was the last day that he was going to see Shinsou. His school and his home was way too far for either of them to meet up, and they doubted their parents would be willing to spend time to let them meet.

"Yeah. We'll meet again. Someday. I promise, Izu." Shinsou gave a small smile, and Midoriya burst into tears, latching onto Shinsou like a leech, saying how he didn't want Shinsou to leave.


	2. Chapter 2 - Separation

**WARNING: Some darker themes. Should be near the front so if you wanna skip it, feel free.**

* * *

They first met when they were five.

They didn't expect the next time they met to be so soon.

"Alright, class," Their caretaker said, "You all know each other from last year, and I believe you have met him last year as well from the two week long transfer. This is Shinsou Hitoshi."

The purple haired boy stood, solemnly beside the caretaker. His purple eyes swept over the students. He was hoping he was placed in the same class as -

He blinked, as green fluffy hair caught his eyes.

Midoriya Izuku.

* * *

Midoriya grinned as he ran over to Shinsou.

"Toshi!"

"Hi Izu.." Shinsou gave a small, sad smile.

"What... happened?" Midoriya asked, concerned. Shinsou's eye bags were a lot worse from the last time he had seen him, and he was slouching like he was really, really, tired.

Shinsou ran his hands though his hair.

"I... things happened. I was placed in some care taking home that just happens to be near here."

"Oh. I'm sorry." Midoriya sadly said, before wrapping the taller boy in a hug.

_Midoriya didn't need to know. He didn't need to tell him._

_He didn't need to know his father had visited home, and that when he left, his mother had suddenly snapped and stabbed herself, right in front of her son._

_He didn't to know._

Midoriya was the best thing in the world. He didn't need to be tainted by such dark thoughts.

"Yeah."

* * *

They stayed together. Shinsou had been forced to move from foster family to foster family, either because they didn't like that he had a villainous quirk when he had used it by accident, or just grew tired of him being "weird" in general.

He didn't care. All his foster families had been in Midoriya's area, so the duo were able to stay together most of the time in school. It was annoying that he had to keep learning the new routes to and from school, but he didn't care.

It was when he was seven when he realised how bad the discrimination against Midoriya was.

He had gone to the bathroom, and came back, seeing several of his classmates ganging up against Midoriya. He had a black eye, and was sitting against a wall as a boy kicked him.

"Hey. Leave him alone." Shinsou stomped up to them.

"It's the villain kid! Get away!"

Shinsou visibly scowled at the statement, but he pushed that aside and moved to help Midoriya up. He frowned at the new bruises that Midoriya now had, as he tenderly handled the green haired boy.

"You okay, Toshi?" Midoriya asked, absently rubbing his stomach. No doubt there was a bruise there too, from that kick.

"Tch. You're the one who got beaten up and you're asking me if I'm okay, Izu? Really?" Shinsou raised an eyebrow.

"I mean... I know where they're coming from. I'm quirkless... and I wanna be a hero... They just find the idea silly... and I'm useless without a quirk and - " He was cut off when Shinsou's eye twitched and he grabbed Midoriya by the shoulders.

"You're not useless without a quirk. And you can be a hero without one."

"R...really? My mom... when I asked her... when I was four, she... left me in the room..." Midoriya looked at Shinsou.

"Don't mind her. You can be a hero."

Midoriya latched himself onto Shinsou, close to squeezing the air out of the purple haired boy's lungs, on the verge of tears. Shinsou reassuringly pat the shorter boy's back.

Who cares if he was only seven? He's adopting Midoriya, whether anyone would let him or not. Midoriya was his cute little brother and needed to be protected.

* * *

They were in their third grade of elementary school, and Midoriya had finally taken Shinsou's advice after two years of the taller boy nagging, and was in the staff room talking to the teachers about the ongoing bullying in school.

Shinsou had remained in the classroom, doing some math homework while waiting for Midoriya to be done.

Damn those multiplication tables. How was knowing wha was helpful in life? Don't they have like... phones? Or calculators?

"Ne, why do you hang around that quirkless loser that much?" A boy asked. Shinsou raised his head, seeing three boys in front of him. One had a wing quirk. The other was able to extend his fingers to ridiculous lengths. The one that had spoken was able to pull things around with weak gravity manipulation.

"He's my friend." Shinsou frowned. He did not like where this conversation was going.

"You should hang out with us instead." Shinsou raised an eyebrow.

"What?"

"We mean it." The boy stretched out his hand, "You're quirk is awesome. You can make anyone do anything you like. You can steal stuff, break stuff, make the teachers give you full marks, anything. And no one would know it's you."

Shinsou hissed.

_They wanted to be friends to use his quirk? For bad things?_

He swatted his hand away, "Look. I appreciate the sentiment, but I have no intention of using my quirk for things like that. I want to be a hero. If I need full marks, I'll study. If I need something, I'll buy it. I'm not using my quirk for things like that."

The boy with gravity had angry expression on his face, "How -"

He was immediately silenced with the finger boy, who clamped his hand over his hand and harshly smacked his other hand on Shinsou's table, scaring the purple haired boy, who yelped.

"Don't answer him, Yoku. He could use his quirk on you!"

Shinsou was seething internally.

_Stop judging me on how I may or may not act based on my quirk._

"Toshi?" Midoriya peeked his head into the classroom and frowned upon seeng the three boys. "What do you want with Toshi?"

"What's it to you, you quirkless loser?" Wing boy shot.

"That's my friend, and you're harassing him." Midoriya pointed out, "That's what it is to me, Tsubasa-kun."

_Ah... yeah... that's his name._ Shinsou blinked. He had no idea how Midoriya was able to remember the quirks and names of every single person in his class. He still wasn't sure of the name of his teachers, even after six months of them teaching him. His memory was ridiculously good. He had memorised the entire multiplication table in twenty minutes, flat.

Tsubasa pushed him, and Midoriya yelped, falling on his butt.

Shinsou growled, and tried to get to Tsubasa, but Yoku and the other boy pushed him back, smirking.

"Sebi! Don't let him move."

Tsubasa kicked the smaller boy, and Shinsou couldn't even make a sound as Sebi, the boy with the finger quirk, covered wrapped his finger around him and Toku had him pinned to the ground with his gravity quirk.

Shinsou hissed as he watched Tsubasa abused his friend.

He hated doing this. It, in a way, was reinforcing to his peers that his quirk wasn't a heroic one. But he always used it as a last resort against his classmates if they ever went too far against Midoriya or himself.

He glared at Yoku and Sebi, growling, "Leave. Now. Or I'll use my quirk."

Yoku and Sebi didn't dare to respond. After all, that was how his quirk was activated. They motioned Tsubasa to leave, and walked out the classroom, jeering, "See. You're just a villain, threatening us!"

Shinsou picked himself off the ground, and went to help Midoriya.

The winged boy had done quite a number on Midoriya. His arm was bleeding when his wing scratched Midoriya, and his legs were covered in bruises. His uniform had rode up in the scuffle, revealing a multitude of ugly, black bruises that were starting to form.

"You can't keep letting them do this, Izu." Shinsou sighed, "It's not roughhousing anymore, or boosting their self esteem. They're hurting you because they can. One day, they're gonna break something you can't recover from." Shinsou said, as he helped the boy up, frowned as Midoriya favoured one leg over the other.

_He must have injured it, or sprained it somehow._

Shinsou helped the injured Midoriya into the infirmary, and let Midoriya explain to the nurse what had happened. Despite adults supposed to be unbiased towards the students, almost all the staff was wary of Shinsou and his quirk, so he refused to speak unless he was spoken to, which was almost never. The teachers refused to answer any question that he had asked in class, so whenever he was confused, there was almost no one to help him. He was lucky that Midoriya was so nice and kind, and helped him whenever he needed it.

"You two need to stop getting into fights." The nurse sighed, as she applied antiseptic to Midoriya's cuts, "Trying to seek attention like this never works."

_It's not like we wanted to start a fight!_ Shinsou was screeching internally. _And Izu doesn't even like attention!_

But he knew it was no use. Everyone would forever be prejudiced against the quirkless boy and the boy with the villainous quirk.

It turned out that Midoriya did have a sprained ankle, and Shinsou had gotten scolded for coming home late, as he had helped the limping Midoriya back home.

* * *

Shinsou wanted to cry when he heard the news.

They had just finished their fourth year in elementary school. Midoriya had gotten first in class, got beaten up again for being "a quirkless loser and useless and shouldn't be getting first." and he had gotten second. Or he was supposed to get second, but everyone was somehow convinced that he had used his quirk to cheat. Midoriya had gotten really mad over that, but he just complained to the teacher and avoided letting his displeasure out on his classmates.

Like that wasn't bad enough. But it wasn't important enough to warrant crying.

Shinsou had been transferred yet again to another household, and was being forced to move to another city. It wasn't far from Musutafu, but they wouldn't be able to see each other again unless it was the weekends, and that depended on whether Shinsou's new caretakers (He wouldn't say parents) would let him out of the city.

The five years they spent together in the same preschool and elementary school were the best times they ever had. They had gotten bullied as lot, sure. Bruises and injuries, yep. But they supported each other through and through when everyone else left them in the dust. That's all they wanted.

_Why was the world trying so hard to pull them apart? What kind of god had they offended!?_

At least they knew each other's addresses. And they knew how to write. So they could write letters to each other. They would only be able to get a reply once a week, but that was a lot better than no contact at all.

"Promise me you won't let them take advantage of you." Shinsou said.

Midoriya was crying. Tears rolled down his cheeks as his emerald green eyes watered.

"I... promise..." He hiccupped, hands wrapped around Shinsou as he bawled his eyes out into Shinsou's shirt.

Shinsou sighed, "You're way too good to anyone. If they hurt you, tell the teacher. Even if they don't do anything. Or tell me. I don't care what my new caretakers say. I'll come right over."

"That's... illegal... you're underaged... you need to be at least twelve...to take the train on.. your own..." Midoriya cried.

"Then I'll wait till I'm twelve, and then come over and kick everyone's butts for you." Shinsou softly ruffled Midoriya's hair, trying to remember the feeling of his hair twirling in his fingers.

Midoriya pulled away, and carefully dug out an old notebook, passing it to Shinsou.

"This ... take it... so you'll... never forget me... " Midoriya hiccupped.

"I'll never forget about you Izu, stop thinking like that." Shinsou sighed, flipping open the notebook, "Wait... isn't this..."

"Yeah." Midoriya nodded, "The one when we... were five."

His eyes stopped on the childish scribble from five years ago. The purple and black scrawls were ugly, and the paper was torn from Midoriya's carelessness as a toddler, but Shinsou could still remember the very moment that Midoriya had sheepishly turned to the page for him, saying that was his hero costume.

Shinsou flipped the book shut. He couldn't stop the rush of emotions that ran through him like someone had turned the faucet on full blast, and the tears ran down his face. He hastily rubbed them away, but the tears kept coming.

"I'm... sorry... I really don't ... wanna leave..." He cried. This time, it was his turn to envelope Midoriya in a hug, as he sobbed into his shoulder. "I don't... I'll miss you, Izu."

"Yeah..." Midoriya had burst into tears again, "I'll miss you too, Toshi."


	3. Chapter 3 - Words will always hurt me

**The title for this chapter was supposed to be "Sticks and stones might break my bones, but words will always hurt me" but there wasn't enough characters...**

**Warning: More Dark Themes ahead, in the later part of the chapter.**

* * *

The bullying only got worse.

Without Shinsou, the children in his classes had gotten more bold. After all, there was no one there to threaten to brainwash them. Midoriya was helpless on his own, too mild to fight back, too willing to take the blame for whatever was thrown at him, too nice to do anything besides tell the teachers.

Midoriya was tripped in hallways, had basketballs thrown at his face in sports, had his worksheets were soaked when someone spilt water on him, had gotten scalded by burning hot soup because someone "accidentally" dumped the entire bowl of pipping hot noodles on him.

Midoriya never fought back.

He accepted it.

_I'm quirkless. _

_I'm useless._

_I deserve this._

_They're trying to tell me not the be a hero._

_Without power, I can't save anyone._

Still, he never gave up hope.

Midoriya still wrote to Shinsou. Every week, he would skip happily to the post office to pick up the letters, immediately identifying Shinsou's from the pile of bills from the messy scrawling on the envelope. He loved reading the stupid jokes Shinsou sometimes added in the letters, or the variety of things Shinsou did in his new school.

Apparently, on the very first day, his teacher had introduced him and his quirk. The cycle repeated itself, and no one was willing to talk to, or even get near Shinsou in fear he would brainwash them. That letter had almost been crushed into a ball, one of the only letters that had been crushed before it had been hole punched and filed neatly in a folder in his room.

The second letter to be handled with so much anger had been that Shinsou had gotten detention for a whole week. Apparently, a whole group of students had gotten into a fight with another class, and they had pinned the blame on him, saying that he had brainwashed them to fight. Because no one had any proof, the teachers just decided to stick him in detention to placate the entire class.

He never told Shinsou about the bullying getting worse. He told him it was the normal, stationery thrown at him, mocking him in front of the class, etcetera.

_Toshi already had his own problems to worry about. He doesn't have to worry about me._ Midoriya thought, as he penned down his own replies despite the sharp ache in his ribs from when Yoku had tripped him and he fell down the stairs.

He tried to train himself, going on runs around the dump near his house. The dump had become more like a safe house for him, whenever he didn't want to hear his mother wallowing to herself in her room. The sound of the beach calmed him, but he had wrinkled his nose at all the unsightly rubbish that littered the beach.

He tried to clear it. Bit by bit. He wasn't strong enough to carry washing machines and trucks or anything. But he tried. He had tried to dismantle all the items that were too large for him to move. It had an unintended outcome. Midoriya had gotten curious about the inner workings of the machinery, slowly pulling wires and bolts apart as he slowly ventured into the machine. First it was his head, then his torso, then legs.

He didn't realise that he actually fit in a washing machine.

He admired the maze of colourful wires, the glinting screws and bolts, his brain automatically making connects as he peered and prodded the insides of the machine.

He stored the information away for future usage. Any kind of knowledge was useful, after all. Maybe one day he'll need to fight a villain with a washing machine quirk.

Ha.

_Stop fooling yourself._

He didn't realise how much he missed his purple haired friend.

* * *

Shinsou sighed. Everyone had treated him like was some sort of freak.

At least... when he was with Midoriya, he felt wanted. Appreciated.

He wondered how Midoriya was doing. He could tell that while Midoriya was telling him about the bullying, he felt it was getting worse. Midoriya would never fight back. He knew that.

He was too nice. He wouldn't want him to worry.

Shinsou leaned back on his chair. His current foster family was decent enough, giving him his own room with the bare necessities. They ignored him most of the time, and he did have to do all the chores, like wiping the windows and mopping the ground, and apparently they only adopted him for some kind of bet and some community service tally or something or other.

He absentmindedly started writing on the paper, blinking when he realised what he had written, turning red as he reread it.

_I hope the situation gets better for you, little brother!_

_From Shinsou Hitoshi (__Toshi)_

He hastily scratched out the "little brother", before sticking the paper in the envelope and closing it. Hopefully, Midoriya wasn't able to decipher the scratched out words.

* * *

His wish wasn't granted.

He had ripped open the next letter that he had gotten, reading everything that Midoriya had written. Apparently, this time, someone had taken his essay and ripped it up, leaving Midoriya unable to hand up his homework in time. The teacher had gotten fed up with Midoriya's "excuses" that he was being bullied, and practically berated him in front of the entire class that he was quirkless, and should stop trying to seek attention.

He had been assigned to rewrite the essay with double the amount of pages, and he had done that as well, preparing to hand it in to the teacher the next day. However, Sebi had ripped it up again, but this time the teacher happened to walk in the classroom.

Sebi was given detention, but poor Midoriya had to rewrite the essay again for the third time, with triple the original number of pages since the teacher had deduced that he had somehow pissed Sebi off to make him rip up his homework.

Shinsou was seething when Midoriya also mentioned that Sebi had somehow convinced some boy from the neighbouring class with an explosion quirk, and an explosive personality to match, to blow up his notebook. According to Midoriya, he had been goaded into it, so he didn't hold anything against the boy who unknowingly destroyed his stuff. Tsubasa has used his wings to scatter the broken notebook all over the courtyard in the school, and Midoriya had gotten in trouble again for littering.

Then he came to the end of the letter.

_Don't worry about me, Toshi! I'll be fine!_

_P.S. I don't mind you being my brother! You're the best big brother ever! Even if you're older than me by two weeks!_

_Your little brother,_  
_Midoriya Izuku (Izu)_

Shinsou had turned completely red, before a grin made its way onto his face.

Yup. He was adopting Midoriya.

UA High School. They were currently in their final year of elementary school, and would be moving to middle school in a few months.

Around three more years before they could finally go to the same school again.

* * *

This time, instead of a letter, there was a roll of papers addressed to him.

Confused, Shinsou carefully undid the ribbon, blinking as he unrolled it as a well drawn picture stared back at him.

He carefully inspected the large, A3 paper that he had received. It looked so similar to the one in the notebook that Midoriya gave him, but it was a lot better drawn. He could see each and every strand of purple sticking in every direction, used in a different shade of purple. The mask had a metallic shine to it, and a much straighter and scarf looking item rested on the figure's shoulders, as apposed to the spaghetti looking mess on the notebook.

He carefully picked up the post-it that had been stuck into the roll of papers.

_Happy Birthday Toshi!_

_I hope I improved since I was five in drawing!_

_Izu._

Shinsou wanted to cry. His entire life, Midoriya had been the only one to celebrate his birthday, and vice versa. No one in his new family cared enough, and his classamates kept avoiding him.

He wasn't expecting Midoriya to full out draw a picture large enough to act as a poster and send it to him.

He carefully taped the drawing to his wall, alongside the post-it.

Shinsou didn't possess the artistic skills that Midoriya did. He was going to figure out what to get for his unofficial little brother who's birthday was in two weeks.

Maybe he should get him a set of notebooks, so Midoriya could keep on jotting down his quirk notes that he loved so much.

* * *

Two years.

Two years of bullying. Two years of constant torture. Two years of repeatedly being told he would amount to nothing and wasn't worthy to be in anyone's presence.

Two years with nothing but Shinsou's letters as a comfort. He tried to remember the times Shinsou had helped him up, all the good times they had together.

But the memories were never able to free him from the shackles that dragged him deeper in the pitch black, eternal abyss. The metal chains that prevented him from breaking free, the heavy shackles that clung to his arms tightly, not letting him reach for the surface even though he felt so, so suffocated by the heavy atmosphere.

He knew he wasn't drowning. Air was entering his lungs. He wasn't breathing in any fluids.

_But why did he feel so short of breath?! Why was it so hard to breathe?_

Any time he was alone, either stuffed in his locker, locked in his room, or left by himself in the classrooms to clear up the mess of his things, he felt it. The suffocating pressure, pushing down on his chest and making it hard to breathe. The bright red blood, trickling out of the wounds inflicted by his classmates, dripping down his arms through his bandages. The ugly sea of bruises, littering his body and threatening to suffocate him from pain as he gasped, the aching even more pronounced as he lay down.

He thought that once he had hit middle school, it would get better.

_ After all, they were all more mature, right? They would stop roughhousing, and act their age, right?_

It didn't. He had been unlucky enough to be placed in exactly the same class as his preschool and elementary school peers. The ones that were aware of his heritage, his farfetched dreams, his lack of a quirk, and knew exactly where to verbally and physically hit where it hurt the most.

He barely slept. He spent a lot of time dressing his wounds, and trying to finish all the homework that had piled up from teachers just disliking him for being "attention seeking". They were getting tired of his "excuses" that his classmates were destroying his homework, even though one teacher had literally caught the class in the act but still chose to blame Midoriya for being useless and not being able to stand up for himself.

_"Useless."_

_"Such a worthless Deku."_

_"What a crybaby."_

_"You can't be a hero without a quirk, dumbass."_

_"Stop picking fights with everyone. You know you can't win, stop wasting everyone's time."_

_"You're worthless."_

_"Stop lying and trying to frame your classmates. If you didn't do your work, just admit it. You're quirkless and powerless, stop adding to your uselessness by messing with your classmates and lying."_

_"Don't even try to be a hero. You'll just drag the people around you down with your uselessness."_

_"Maybe you should just kill yourself, idiot."_

_"Yeah! Swan dive off the roof! Then maybe you'll be reborn with a quirk and better parents!"_

The harsh words of his classmates and teachers rang throughout his head in the silence of the night, their voices mixing together to create a cacophony of vicious slandering and insults. The harsh discordant mixture of sounds echoed in his mind.

_I really am a useless Deku._

Midoriya wondered why Shinsou even put up with him.

He was a burden. He couldn't even protect himself.

They were right. If he couldn't even defend himself from them, from a bunch of middle schoolers, then how could he even think about being a hero? Villains would be way more worse than children.

The last thing his classmates had said echoed, lingering in his mind like a silent whisper of his inner thoughts.

_Maybe I really should just jump off the roof. No one will miss me anyway. _

He shock his head. No. Shinsou still cared about him, regardless of what he thought. He didn't know why Shinsou cared about someone as worthless as him, but as long as Shinsou cared, he would keep living. Not for himself, or for anyone else. Just for Shinsou, so he wouldn't be sad.

_Stop lying to yourself. _A voice in his brain whispered, _You know you won't amount to anything._

_Shut up. _He told himself.

_Don't be so selfish. Stop pulling everyone down with you. _The voice purred, and Midoriya shuddered at how similar the voice sounded like his very own.

* * *

Midoriya Izuku gave up.

He put the pen down, looking at the letter, addressed to the only person that that ever cared about his worthless, useless self, Shinsou.

He grasped the letter. He was going to post it, but then decided against it. What would Shinsou even think if he received it? He would know how useless he was, he would know that Midoriya wasn't strong enough to stand up for himself, that was a coward to try to run away from his problems instead of facing them head on.

_Did he care?_

He knew he should. But he just felt so empty inside.

Rereading the letters Shinsou sent to him no longer gave him comfort. It just fuelled that feeling inside him that constantly told him that yes, he was nothing. He was worthless. He was useless. He wasn't even worth the dirt beneath his own feet.

He placed the letter on his table, before standing up, and headed for the staircase.

Hopefully, his classmates might have mercy on him and grant him his last wish, written on a sticky note stuck to the table beside the letter.

* * *

Shinsou had turned twelve two week ago.

He had a small smile on his face as he waited for the train to Musutafu City. It was Midoriya's birthday, and for some reason, everyone in school was let out slightly early, and he had gotten permission from his foster family, as long as he came back before ten at night. He wanted to go visit Midoriya, and surprise him.

He sighed as he took in the sights, that he still remembered clearly from two years ago. The playground, the buildings. He finally made his way to the school, seeing students and teacher alike walking out of it.

Midoriya had mentioned in one of his letters that he was in Class 1-A. He didn't know where the classrooms where, though...

He tapped a blonde on the shoulder.

"What the fuck do you want?!" He growled.

"Do you know where Class 1-A is?" Shinsou asked, ignoring the murderous rage that he could feel being emitted from the blonde.

"There, idiot!" The boy pointed somewhere on the first floor, on the building on the left. "Now leave me alone."

Shinsou rolled his eyes at the boy's attitude, but still thanked him, and headed off to find the classroom.

He found that it was empty.

He was about to leave when he caught sight of yellow and white paper on a table near the middle, and a bright yellow school bag on the chair next to it.

_Wasn't that Izu's bag?_

Shinsou was getting worried.

_Don't worry... he's probably in the bathroom or something..._

But he couldn't stop that feeling in the pit of his stomach, telling him that something was going very, very wrong.

He walked into the room, and read what was on the sticky note.

_Please, if someone could bring this to the post office for me, that would be much appreciated. __I'm sorry I'm so useless, and I'm too cowardly to send this out myself._

_This is all I ask. __I won't bother you all, ever again. I promise. _

_You won't ever see me again._

_Midoriya Izuku._

Shinsou bit his lip as he looked over to the white letter next to the sticky note, addressed to his his address... and to him.

He ripped it open, eyes widening as he read what was inside.


	4. Chapter 4 - Empty

**Warning - Very Dark themes ahead, such as depression, suicide, etcetera. If you're sensitive to this kind of stuff... just skip the chapter.**

* * *

_Dear Toshi,_

_I'm sorry. I'm so useless and worthless._

_I can't take it anymore._

_Thank you for all the time we spent together. And for writing all those letters to me for the past two years. Those were the best moments of my life, hanging out with you, and reading those silly little jokes. _

_Thank you for taking care of me all those years. Even though I'm so weak and useless, and I can't stand up for myself, you kept helping me out regardless of what happened. Thank you for believing in me all those times I needed, for not calling me out for being a crybaby, or pushing me away because I was quirkless like everyone else. _

_Thank you for putting up with me and my silly dreams for so long._

_I don't want this. _

_I don't want to do this. _

_But it will be better for everyone. I don't want to drag anyone down with me, including you, Toshi. You deserve anything or anyone better than me. You're my hero, Toshi, and I hope that one day, everyone will see you as one too, regardless of your quirk or appearance. You've been trying to protect me, encourage me, ever since we were little. I'm so sorry I wasn't able to learn to be useful enough and you got stuck with a useless Deku like me._

_I'm sorry it came to this. I hope you become an awesome hero, Toshi, and be able to save anyone you want._

_Please don't blame anyone. I chose to do this, even if I don't really want to. There isn't a way for a quirkless, weak, useless person to be a hero. There just isn't. I should have given up long ago, but I was too naive and kept trying, kept believing in a pipe dream that would never come true._

_Please don't tell anyone what I did._

_If you don't get the letter, that's fine._

_But if you're reading this, at least let me tell you something. _

_Please, forget about me. Forget you met me, forget everything about me. I don't want you to hurt because of me. No one deserves to get hurt because of me. Just forget about me._

_Midoriya Izuku._

* * *

The paper was stained with blotches, that made some of the words blurry, but Shinsou was able to read the whole thing through. He wasn't sure if the blotches were made by Midoriya's tears as he wrote the letter, or his own that were starting to form in his eyes.

His heart clenched, it ached for his little brother who was just calling out for help and no one bothered to even help, and even pushed him further down into the pitch black abyss he had been trying so hard to escape from.

_Why didn't he notice it earlier? _

Midoriya's letters had been a clear indication that everything was spiralling downwards, and he had naively assumed that Midoriya could ignored them and wait it out.

He was a fool to believe so.

Midoriya was still a kid. An emotional kid. He was affected by his own surroundings much more than Shinsou was.

_He should have checked on him earlier, bugged his foster parents more, or even just snuck out on his own to seek the green haired boy out, even if it was illegal._

Shinsou ran out of the classroom, his hand tightly clenching the letter.

* * *

Midoriya stood on the roof, and closed his eyes.

He didn't want this. He didn't want it to end like this.

But he didn't want to drag anyone down.

He was such a coward.

_I'm useless. I'm worthless._

He slowly opened his eyes, and exhaled. He leaned forward, letting his limbs go limp as he let gravity take ahold of him.

He felt nothing.

The school was empty at the time. Everyone had left. No one would see him. No one would remember him. He wasn't hurting anyone, not dragging anyone down with him anymore.

He felt the wind rustling through his hair. It was… oddly comforting, whispering to him.

_It'll be over soon._

He could sense the ground getting closer and closer. Then everything became black.

He thought he had heard his name being yelled, but he was probably imagining it.

There wasn't anyone there, after all.

* * *

The courtyard was empty. No one was around.

_Where was Izu?_

He caught sight of a flash of green, and he turned to the rooftop of the neighbouring building. There was a figure, short, fluffy hair ruffling in the wind, wearing the uniform that everyone in that school was wearing.

Midoriya Izuku.

Shinsou wanted to yell. He wanted to call out. But his breathe had hitched, stuck in his throat. He found it hard to breathe, to inhale, his voice was stuck in his throat as he tried to hard to just make a sound. He tried to force a word out and suddenly he felt like choking so, so badly.

Shinsou couldn't make a sound as he watched the only person he cared about, that cared about him, standing on the roof. He watched as Midoriya let himself fall off the roof.

His mind refused to register it. It was only when Midoriya was that close to the ground, when his brain finally stopped short circuiting and he yelled, "IZU!"

He rushed over immediately, looking over the body that had blood pooling out of it rapidly. He stopped, looking at the body of his best friend and little brother, Midoriya Izuku.

Shinsou crouched and reached down to touch Midoriya's head, but he stopped himself in time. Midoriya had fallen head first. He didn't want to do anything that might further hurt the boy.

_If he was still alive._

Shinsou shook the dark thoughts from his head.

Blood caked the boy's forehead, there was so much blood in the puddle around the Midoriya, his eyes were squeezed shut as blood trickled out of his wounds.

He had a soft smile on his face.

Shinsou swallowed down the tears that threatened to leak out.

_Calm down… calm down…_

He carefully placed a hand against Midoriya's forehead, cradling it against his knees as much as he could without causing more damage to the boy. He could feel the tears leaking out as he pressed his hand against Midoriya's cooling arm, the body head rapidly being lost to the surroundings. It was ice cold to the touch, and it was getting even colder.

He didn't care that he was getting uniform covered in blood.

_Izu had just commited suicide._

He had snapped. All the words had finally hit home, hit right where it hurts.

He wasn't fast enough to save him. So what if he could come and kick anyone's butt? Midoriya had been driven to kill himself, and he had just did that.

It wasn't just bullying anymore. Everyone had just ganged up on Midoriya because he was quirkless. The teachers refused to believe him because he didn't have a quirk.

Everyone practically targetted the boy like vultures to a carcass. And Midoriya was way too nice, way to self deprecating, to see how they treated him was wrong. He believed that their behaviour was justified, and had taken his life without the support he had been denied for too long.

He had always seen the best in people. Believed that they could do good.

Believed that anyone could be a hero.

All but himself.

_He was such a hypocrite._

He wanted to cry. But he needed to get help first. Crying wouldn't save Midoroya. He shakily stood up, trying not to vomit as the metallic smell of blood finally registered in his head, and he dashed out of the school.

For some reason, it seemed like there was no one around. No kids, no children, no adults, not even a dog or cat in sight.

He decided to return to the school. There had to be a security guard or something, right?! The entire place couldn'y have just been abandoned for absolutely no reason.

He saw a large pool of blood, but no body.

Shinsou stared at the pool of blood, panting, looking on dumbfounded, "Wha…."

He examined the large puddle. He couldn't help it. The smell was revolting, but that habit that Midoriya had was ingrained into his brain, and while he wasn't as good as the shorter boy at it, he was decent enough at analysis.

It was definitely a problem. The metallic smell was more than enough to confirm that it was blood, and the sheer amount of it was sickening. Even if he wanted to fool himself that this was some sort of sick joke, he couldn't. The sensations were too real. Everything was too real. The fact that there was just a puddle of blood, with no body, and no foot prints or other clues to shows that any possible body was moved, was troubling.

Shinsou just stared at the puddle in shock, clutching the letter in his hand as he unconsciously clenched his fists.

Midoriya had fallen. He had seen it.

A body couldn't just disappear like that.

That letter was proof. Real proof that what had happened was real. He had seen it with his own eyes.

_What the hell happened?_

He felt his world break apart.

* * *

Shinsou could only stare blankly at his paper, that only had the word "Essay" written on it. He had homework. But he didn't want to do it. He didn't feel like doing it.

Ever since that incident, Shinsou just broke. He sometimes got angry when people called him a villain and tried to defend himself whenever he heard it, but now, he just remained quiet, not reacting to anything. The only time he showed a hint of emotion was when someone had snatched Midoriya's notebook right out from under his desk, and Shinsou had lashed out in anger, carefully and swiftly taking the notebook back, and glaring hatefully at the perpetrator as he hissed.

After all, they were just like the kids that ended up driving Midoriya off the roof. They just didn't go so far because Shinsou wasn't as tolerant as them as Midoriya had been, and had a quirk.

_They have no right to touch Izu's notebook._

Aside from those times, he felt completely empty inside.

Shinsou used to keep Midoriya's notebook in his bag at all times, or under the desk in lessons. Now, he just brought the book everywhere he went, along with the file of Midoriya's letters, and Midoriya's final, heart wrenching letter containing all his darkest thoughts and shattered dreams.

That was all he had left of his best friend, of his only friend, of his little brother that had finally given in to the darkness of the world.

_Izu had committed suicide._

No matter how hard he tried, every time he closed his eyes, the memory, the living nightmare, would repeat itself, warping about as if even his own mind was trying to mock him for being unable to save his little brother. From himself, no less. He couldn't forget his bloodstained hands, covered in blood. He couldn't forget Midoroya's broken body, lying on the ground, still as a rock.

It was currently August the 15th. It had been a month after Midoriya committed suicide on July the 15th.

On his own birthday.

Shinsou didn't know if it was just a coincidence or Midoriya had purposely chosen that date.

But regardless, the fact that such a pure hearted boy was driven to suicide, by his own classmates and even teachers,

_How could the world be so cruel?_

Nobody had seen Shinsou leave the school. No one had seen Midoriya's suicide, or the inner turmoil from which he suffered, or the mental and physical torture his peers and teachers alike put him through. The large puddle of blood had caught everyone's attention, and Midoriya had not returned to school since. They linked it together, guessing that the boy had been attacked, and had declared him missing.

They had conducted a search. The search had been ongoing for a month.

They had declared him dead and moved on.

He didn't tell anyone about Midoriya did. He promised he would do exactly as Midoriya asked in his letter. He never told anyone about the suicide. He kept his grades up, still pushing to be a hero despite everything pulling him back.

But he couldn't do everything. He couldn't bring himself to forget Midoriya. He could never forget the first and only person who had treated him like he was something. The only person who gave the world everything he had only for for the world to just spit it back in his face. The only person who still believed in everyone despite how badly he was being treated by them.

Shinsou absentmindedly rubbed his neck as he pressed his forehead onto the table. He forced his eyes shut. The lights in his room suddenly felt as if they had gotten way too bright.

He exhaled.

The memories filled his brain again, overloading his mind as the images flooded in.

_Izu committed suicide._

He sucked in a breath, and stared back at the papers on his desk, trying to push the memories aside. If he wanted to be a hero, he needed to get good grades first to even think about getting into UA. And that meant finishing his homework, as much as he preferred to look and reflect on the past and try to figure out how the heck everything had gone so wrong.

* * *

_"... so... random kid... uniform..."_

_"... dead... experiment... tests... data will... useful..."_

_"... not ... as dead... we thought..."_

_"... no quirk... will be ... fun... never..."_

_"... whatever..."_


	5. Chapter 5 - Breaking Point

"Tch." Aizawa grumbled, as he wrapped up another criminal with his capture weapon. He jumped back, kneed his partner in the gut, before leaving their butts in the alleyway, tied up, and called for the police for pick up. Then he went home.

Yamada was sitting at the table, lying face first on the wood as he shakily sat up at the sound of the door opening.

"Uh... hi? Oh, Shouta. Welcome... home...?" Yamada sleepily raised his head, mumbling.

"Yeah." Aizawa grumbled, going to the kitchen and throwing some black coffee instant brew inside a cup, and dumped the hot water into it. He grabbed his cup and dumped himself onto the sofa, drinking angrily.

"Geez, you okay Shou?" Yamada asked.

"I don't care what the media says. It's a puddle of blood. A murderer can't kill someone and leave such a perfect puddle f blood. They wouldn't kill someone and drag the body away either without clearing up the mess, if they're trying to hide the evidence. Aldera has a high suicide rate, and they said the missing kid was quirkless! There was prejudice against him for sure! I'm pretty certain the poor kid was driven to suicide from bullying." Aizawa huffed.

Yamada did understand why Aizawa was upset. Aizawa had been subject to teasing before when he was younger for his quirk, being creepy and scary for taking quirks away and his glowing red eyes. Essentially bullying, but to a much lesser extent because everyone was scared of him.

"And there are no other stains, and I'm pretty sure a suicide victim is in no shape to somehow leave without leaving any traces, so some other person with a psychic or a teleportation quirk must have taken him or something." Aizawa grumbled.

"Hm... assuming that the two events are related." Yamada pointed out, "Midoriya Izuku could have been kidnapped, and didn't commit suicide, and someone thought it would be funny to dump blood on the ground."

He pat Aizawa on the shoulder, "Look, you need to sleep. I know you sympathise with him, but you worrying and not getting rest isn't going to do anyone any good. You have barely slept for a month since that thing happened."

* * *

"I said to bring in dead body. So you decided to bring in a random kid wearing an Aldera Junior High uniform, that is all covered in blood?" Ujiko asked.

"Hey, he just happened to be there." Shigaraki replied.

"Does someone want to explain why I had to drag a bloody kid through my portal? It takes ages to clean it up." Kurogiri grumbled.

"I told you before, I wanted a freshly dead body. I want to experiment and run some tests on it. The data will be useful when Sensei eventually decides on a good combination of quirks for the Nomu."

"And... it seems like you're not doing that with the corpse?" Kurogiri raised an eyebrow.

"According to him... he's not as dead as we thought, apparently. He's alive, barely, somehow. I don't care." Shigaraki hissed.

"Well... he has two toe joints. Wait.. I know this kid. This will be so fun. I've never experimented on a quirkless kid before!" Ujiko rubbed his hands in glee, his eyes moving towards all the glinting surgical equipment on the table next to him. "I better check with Sensei first. He may have a quirk, even though his has two toe joints."

"Yeah yeah. Just fix him or whatever. I'm tired." Shigaraki walked out of the room.

* * *

Midoriya woke up with a splitting headache. He was lying on some sort of cold, hard table, his hands and legs chained down. He didn't want to move anyways, his entire body ached. He tried to open his eyes, but his vision remained dark.

He tried to think how he got into this situation.

_My name is Midoriya Izuku. I'm eleven. I went to Aldera High School. My unofficial older brother is Shinsou Hitoshi. He turned twelve two weeks ago. He has a brainwashing quirk. I'm quirkless. I jumped off a building._

He blinked. He knew he jumped off a building, not wanting to be a burden to anyone.

_Wow. I can't even die right. I really am useless._

He remembered someone yelling his name, right before he hit the ground.

_"IZU!"_

He internally sighed. Someone had seen him.

He realised what that meant. There was only one person who called him Izu, and that was Shinsou.

_No…. Shinsou had seen him. He had actually seem him jump off the roof and crash into the ground. Had seen him bleeding out on the ground as he died._

He wasn't suppose to see that. He wasn't supposed to even be there.

_I should've jumped somewhere else. Gods, I can't even kill myself properly. And I ended up hurting Toshi..._

He was shaken out of his thoughts when he heard a voice.

"Interesting. His skull was split open, broke a lot of bones, lost a lot of blood, and he's still alive! He should have died long before you even brought him in." A man's voice rang out. "I was so sure in my diagnosis before that he was quirkless... being seeing the extend of his injuries and he's still alive, maybe not after all!"

* * *

It took some time for Midoriya to fully recover, even with healing quirks. His skull had been fixed completely, as well as his bones. But the boy still had a multitude of scars, scars that had been left by his classmates whenever they were particularly rough with him.

Midoriya didn't know how long it took for him to recover. He didn't care. He should have died. If these random people found him interesting to play with, at least he was being somewhat useful in entertaining someone.

And then they finally dragged him somewhere, to see someone.

Midoriya didn't know who he was supposed to meet with. The man with a hand on his face just dragged him along the long, dark, haunting hallways, and Midoriya following absently without knowing where they were going. They stopped, and Midoriya just looking at the man with scar tissue running over his entire face. He had no eyes that Midoriya could actually see, but Midoriya had no doubts the man was boring whatever eyes or senses he possessed at him, burrowing right into his soul.

"Sensei, the almost dead kid we brought in like... a month ago?" The hand man said.

"Ah. Thank you Tomura." The man said, and Midoriya felt him shift his attention to the hand man slightly. "This is Shigaraki Tomura. Tomura, Leave us be for a while, no?"

"Alright, Sensei." Shigaraki nodded, before leaving the room in a purple portal.

"Now. Come here."

Midoriya listened immediately. The man was strong, for sure. And it had been conditioned in his mind to do whatever he was told immediately. If his classmates told him to get their bags, he would get it without hesitation. Not doing so would result in even worse injuries.

The man placed his hand on Midoriya's forehead, and he felt some sort of force reach into him, seeping into his very being, poking and prodding as if it was looking for something.

The man hummed, and the feeling disappeared.

"Hmm. You really are quirkless."

Midoriya just stared at the man blankly.

_Was he going to kill him for not having a quirk? _

_If so, great. He'd finally be dead, and not a burden to anyone anymore._

"So. You're clearly special, if you could survive your injuries while quirkless."

Midoriya just looked forward, blinking.

"Clearly, some things happened for you to end up splattered on your school grounds. Is there anyone you hate? Anyone that drove you to do that?"

He just looked at the man emotionlessly. He didn't know what to feel that the question.

Or more like he couldn't feel anything at all. Physically, yes, emotionally, no.

_No one drove me to do that. They suggested it, I thought it was a good suggestion._

The man, seeing as he got no response, sighed, and stuck out his hand, "Join us. I can give you power to get back at those that hurt you. We can pull down this hero society from its roots."

Midoriya just shook his head. He didn't want to hurt anyone, really. Giving him power won't suddenly make him flare up in a rage. If he still had the capacity to get angry.

_Pulling hero society down? He must be a villain._

The man's presence suddenly turned ominous, and his grin glinted in the dark, "Who said you were given a choice?"

He reached out again, pressing his hand hard onto Midoriya's face, and he yelped when he felt a jolt of pain. It felt like a foreign presence was forcing its way into his body, burning his veins and setting them on fire.

_Stop! No!_

"Something about you... makes this harder than it usually is."

He desperately pushed, tried to shove all the pain away, trying to find the source of it.

_WHY DID IT HURT SO MUCH!?_

"Stop resisting, kid. You're just making it hurt more." The man grinned, "Just accept the quirk, and work for me. Easy as that."

_He's trying to give me a quirk? He's trying to force a quirk into me!? How did that even work!?_

He was screeching internally in pain.

Did he want a quirk?

Before, maybe.

Now, not really. He didn't really care enough.

A quirk given by a villain? Hell no.

He summoned all his willpower, anything left that still lingered from his suicide attempt, and shove back. He pushed against the fire roaring in his gut, the electrifying feeling rushing through his veins, right into the source. He shoved back with everything he had, forcing the oppressing force out of his mind and body.

He fell to the ground, exhausted. He coughed out some blood, before closing his eyes, panting.

He dizzily looked up at them man, who just stared, without eyes somehow, at his own hand in wonder. The sides of his vision was starting to get blurry, and Midoriya could feel like he was on the verge of passing out.

"Interesting. No one has actually been able to prevent me from giving them a quirk. You really are one of a kind."

He could see the man's malicious grin stretch even wider, "I suppose it will be fun to see how much you can take before we can break you."

* * *

Midoriya tried to remember.

It felt so hard, so painful, to remember.

They tried to make him forget, to force him to forget. They gave him a new name, Akatani Mikumo.

_He felt only pain._

Midoriya refused to give in, to accept the new identity. He didn't want a new name. He wanted to be himself. Even if he was the useless, quirkless child that got bullied by everyone.

_It hurt too much._

They wanted to break him, to use him.

Midoriya kept resisting.

He didn't want to be a villain. He didn't want to hurt anyone. He didn't listen. He didn't want to listen.

_He could feel his arms disintegrating time and time again, pain shooting through his chests and limbs. His brain was hazy from all the pain, and he didn't know what was going on. The __the dull throbbing of his ribs flared up every now and then, __and he could feel the blood running out of his mouth._

They beat him to the brink of death, before healing him back to a hundred percent.

Rinse and repeat.

He wanted to die. To stop the pain.

He didn't want to die.

_ At least my suffering causes some entertainment._

Either way, it was a win for him.

Did he care whether they ended up killing him?

No.

He didn't know anything anymore.

He remembered a winged child, a boy who could manipulate gravity, a boy who could make his fingers longer, all of them picking on him for being quirkless.

_That memory faded to dust._

He remembered a green haired woman, crying, locking herself in the room.

_That memory disappeared._

He remembered a boy with fluffy purple hair, sitting beside him, laughing and playing with him, helping him when no one ever would.

_Toshi._

He tried to cling on to that set of memories, the only good thing he had left, the only thing that kept him from breaking apart.

He remembered jumping off a building.

He remembered his name being yelled.

He remembered the soft, warm hand caressing his forehead, clearing the harsh buzzing of static in his ears, before his vision slipped to black.

_I hurt him. I hurt Toshi._

_I hurt him __I hurt him __I hurt him__I hurt him__I hurt him__I hurt him__I hurt him__I hurt him__I hurt him - _

They told him he had died. Forced fake memories into his head. His worst nightmares.

_Toshi was dead._

Whatever was left of him broke.

* * *

**So.. some random explanation, cause I myself have no idea what's going on.**

**Midoriya is emotionally traumatised. His peers broke his mentality, and he tried to kill himself, and survived it. Aldera Junior High is around four to five storeys high, according to pictures, and people have a hundred percent death rate at eight to twelve storeys, so it's valid for Midoriya to survive.**

**According to out silly TOK lessons (Theory of Knowledge it's interesting but sucks once you have to do presentations and essays on it) emotions, faith and intuition are three different things. He can't feel things properly emotionally, and doesn't really know how to express them, but knows what he wants and doesn't want, and believes in action based on what he thinks is right and wrong.**

**He knows AFO is a villain, and doesn't want to accept anything from him. He doesn't care how he feels, just that it's wrong and acted based on that. Willpower, while I agree is also partially emotions, is also based on his beliefs that he cannot let AFO give him a quirk. His desperation to prevent that from happening (because it was wrong, not because he felt it) helped in protecting himself from it.**

**My headcanon is that some, if not most quirks are tied to emotions. Bakugou explodes stuff a lot more when he's angry, and I think there's a lot of fanstuff saying that Yamada has trouble controlling his quirk when he experiences intense emotions. Mineta did mention that the time that his sticky orbs stick to stuff depends on how he feels that day. Ojiro's tail is like... a normal animals tail, and those also react depending on his emotions. Uraraka did use her quirk as she floated in the dorms when Ashido (I think) pointed out her crush on Midoriya.**

**So because he's emotionally traumatised, AFO had more trouble forcing a quirk into him, and allowed him prevent accepting the quirk.**


	6. Chapter 6 - Freedom Chained

Nezu clapped his paws as he looked at the assembled heroes.

"Alright. We have gotten several leads, and I have triangulated three positions for the villains' base." He nodded, "While we do have quite a few pro heroes, it would be better to strike all three locations at once. We don't know about their communications, so it is possible they may be alerted when communications from one goes down, that why I didn't suggest jamming the communications."

He started handing out pieces of paper to the heroes, "I have divided you all into groups of four, each for a particular base. I have a rough plan written down, but you guys will need to see how things go in the base."

* * *

"Tch," Aizawa clicked his tongue. He was in a group with Enji, Yamada and Nishiya. Thirteen, Kamihara, Ectoplasm and Hawks were in another team, and Snipe, Hakamata, Kayama, Kan. He was going to be completely honest. He'd rather be in the same team with anyone else but _Enji_. He was too volatile, and didn't care about the amount of collateral damage he caused. Not fitting of a hero. He had no idea how he managed to remain as the Number Two hero.

"It can't be that bad, right?" Yamada scratched his head, "Just bust in, beat em, grab info, bust out."

"Shut up." Enji growled, looking as if he wanted to burn his paper but was unable to do so. Aizawa was glad that Nezu like to subtly toy with him and loved using fire resistant paper so Enji couldn't say he _"accidentally" _burnt it. Nishiya was practically using Yamada and Aizawa as a shield between Enji and himself. He had a wood quirk, and was practically firewood, so Aizawa couldn't really blame him, and he was able to erase quirks, but he found the hero's antics pretty annoying, seeing as he was the Number Six hero.

"Just don't get in my way. Don't blame me if you get burned because you walked into my fire." Enji glowered at Yamada, who just rolled his eyes, but was smart enough to not respond.

* * *

Enji burnt down the door, causing an explosion.

"Can't you be more subtle?" Aizawa hissed. His original plan was to sneak in, find information and any possible hostages that the villains might have, before wrecking havoc. Then the flaming piece of shit had to alert practically anyone in the base. They already had a time limit, dammit, and Enji just had to shorten it.

"Split up! Let's go!" Yamada yelled, and the four heroes all split up.

Aizawa ran along the hallway, carefully entering rooms and taking out any unfortunate villains that might be there.

"I got the data room." Nishiya's voice rang out over the ear piece.

_Thank god it's him and not Endeavor,_ Aizawa thought, _he would burn the entire room down for no reason._

All the hallways ended up converging into one large hallway, and the four heroes ended up running into each other, before rushing down the larger main hallway.

* * *

"Brat, let's go."

Midoriya looked blankly as Controller undid the shackles around his wrist. The collar around his neck weighed him down, but he just stood up and followed him out of the room. That was the usual routine. As long as he did what he was told, he wouldn't be hurt so badly. He analysed heroes, was brought around and forced to fight villains, either as entertainment or just because they had some problems with them. He spoke only when someone asked him a question, either about a certain hero or quirk, and he was answer with the least amount of words possible and be done with it. He never killed anyone, and more often than not the villains had to use the collar around his neck to allow Controller, a new addition to their team, to force him to do things against his will.

Apparently, it took Controller a lot more energy than usual to mind control Midoriya, so they had to use the collar to weaken him in order to make it easier on Controller.

They ended up in a huge, dimly lit room, staring straight at four heroes.

"A child?" Yamada growled, "Hey, step away from the boy."

Aizawa took a good look at the boy. He looked still as stone, his face deadpan, and his eyes completely void of emotion.

_Gods, what did they do to you? _Aizawa looked worriedly at the kid. He looked like a young teenager, and even though he himself was deadpan and grumpy all the time, a child was not supposed to look like he had suffered his entire life and couldn't care less if he died. Heck, even he showed emotion sometime, but this kid felt like he didn't even feel anything.

"Shit, heroes? What are they doing here!?" Controller hissed. "Brat, profiles!?"

The boy responded immediately, turning to look at Enji before he spoke in a completely tired and monotone voice.

"Hero name, Endeavor. Age, 45. Height, 1.95 metres. Blood type, AB. Rank, number two. Quirk, Hellflame. He can produce and manipulate fire at will. No significant support items. Has caused collateral damage before but doesn't seem to care."

Enji growled at the last statement.

The boy turned to Nishiya.

"Hero name, Kamui Woods. Age, 29. Height, 1.68 metres. Blood type, A. Rank, number six. Quirk, Arbor. It allows him to control the wood on his body. No significant support items. He's fast and limber, and his quirk gives him great mobility, and is also great for restraining enemies."

Nishiya narrowed his eyes in confusion at the kid. That kind of information was borderline stalkerish.

He then faced Yamada.

"Hero name, Present Mic. Age, 30. Height, 1.85 metres. Blood type, B. Rank, unknown. Quirk, Voice. He can increase the volume of his voice to create loud, high-pitched sounds. He has a directional speaker to help him direct his quirk. His volume can annoy and distract enemies as well as block out other sounds."

Yamada was screeching internally in alarm at the amount of information the child had.

_At least he didn't know he had a fear of bugs_.

Aizawa would admit, he was curious as to what the child would say about him.

The boy just looked blankly at Aizawa, "Unknown."

_He doesn't know who I am. _Aizawa thought, but he had a sharp suspicion that the boy knew more than he let on. The boy had an odd glint in his eye and he seemed to be straining a bit to refrain himself from speaking.

Controller snorted, "Probably some newbie starting out. Hey, brat, go get em."

The boy didn't make a single movement.

"Hey. Brat, didn't you hear me? Get rid of the heroes."

The boy just shook his head.

"For gods sake, you know, it's amazing how you're willing to fight other villains, but when it comes to a hero you just refuse to listen. If you were just willing to fight heroes, it would be much easier on you." Controller sighed, flicking the switch on the remote in his hands.

Midoriya felt a shock go through his system.

_I can take this… just… don't… attack…. anyone…_

"Hey! Leave him alone!" Yamada yelled, but Controller ramped it up to full power.

* * *

Midoriya felt his control slipping.

Aizawa saw his eyes glaze over, and hissed.

"Alright, go."

Midoriya shot forward, nailing Yamada, who was the closest, right under the directional speaker. The device slammed against the Voice Hero's chin, and Aizawa swore he heard his friend's jaw slam shut.

_I don't want to hurt anyone._

He bounded off the ground, and Nishiya grabbed the boy and bounded him up in his wood. He didn't expect Midoriya to _somehow_ procure a knife from somewhere and swiftly cut himself free.

Enji went after Controller, and promptly roasted him.

"Endeavor! You're not supposed to kill them!" Yamada grumbled. Controller just stepped back, and ran back down the hallway, Enji hot on his trail, quite literally. Yamada followed him, yelling, "Restrain! Not kill!"

Aizawa activated his quirk, and was surprised to get no feedback from Midoriya. He would feel something similar to a switch on a quirk factor, and felt it flip every time he looked at someone.

He blinked, before trying again, his eyes drying out but he didn't care that much.

Midoriya slashed at Nishiya, who dodged swiftly.

_I don't… stop… stop… I don't want this…_

_STOP._

Aizawa watched as the boy shook his head, sparks flying from the collar as he tried to free himself from the control. With one swift movement, Aizawa got in close, distracting the boy enough for Nishiya to knock the knife out of his hands and restrained him. Aizawa set about unlatching the collar, throwing it off the boy. Thank god it was similar enough to Yamada's directional speaker for them to have the same kind of latch. He had to sometimes forced the speaker off his friend's neck when he got tired and fell asleep in the weirdest places with the damn thing around his neck.

Midoriya slumped in the hero's grasp, blinking as Nishiya carefully put him down.

He tiredly whispered.

"Hero name, Eraser Head. Age, 30. Height, 1.83 metres. Blood type, B. Rank, unknown. Quirk, Erasure. It cancels other Quirk powers and abilities when he looks at target. He fights with a scarf made of steel wire alloy woven with carbon nano fibers. His goggles makes it hard to deduce who he is looking at. He is better at one-on-one fights, or stealth missions, where he can surprise his opponents."

Aizawa's expression turned to that of confusion, when the boy's expression relaxed to its former completely deadpan state. The child did know who he was, but he had purposely forced himself to not tell Controller. _Why?_

"Are you okay?" Aizawa asked.

Midoriya just looked up at Aizawa, and blinked.

_He's asking if I'm okay? Does that even matter._

Seeing as he was getting no reply, Aizawa asked another question, "Do you have any injuries?"

"I don't know."

Aizawa frowned. The kid was cooperative, but how the heck did someone not know if they had any injuries.

"How do you feel?"

"Nothing."

Heck, even Nishiya was getting confused with the kid, Yamada as well.

Enji stomped back to the hallway, "Damn villain got away. They had a stupid purple warp quirk user."

"Hmm. Do we know anyone who could do that?" Yamada asked.

They all shook their head. Midoriya made no movement or response, seeing as he wasn't being asked.

"Alright. What do we do with this kid."

"Catch him. He's clearly a villain." Enji set his fist on fire and brought it way too close to Midoriya's face for comfort, but the boy didn't even flinch even though there was a flaming fist literally an inch from his face. There was _clearly_ something wrong with that.

Aizawa hissed and grabbed the boy by the shoulders, pulling him away from Enji and pressed Midoriya's back against his chest gently. He was hissing a lot today. He blamed Enji.

"He's a child. And he was being brainwashed. You and I both know that it was Controller there forcing him to fight."

Nishiya held up a thumb drive. "I already made a copy of the data. The upload was fast, so it's probably not much, and I already called for cleanup."

Yamada also popped up from the hallway, "All clear. All remaining villains are taken out by yours truly!"

"Alright. Let's go." Enji growled, and headed back where they came.

"Are you good enough to walk?" Nishiya asked Midoriya.

Midoriya nodded.

Suddenly, the alarms blared, and all the doors closed. Nishiya tried to pry them open, and hissed when he realised that upon contact, his quirk faded out.

"Quirk proof. Dammit."

Aizawa hissed.

"Does anyone know how we can get out?" Yamada asked.

"The vents." Aizawa said.

"I saw the plans while downloading the stuff. It's a literal maze." Nishiya shook his head.

"I know the way." Midoriya said, "I can draw a map for you."

"How about.. you lead the way?" Yamada asked.

"You want me to… get out with you?" Midoriya blinked, slightly confused.

"Obviously. We're not leaving you here."

"But my life doesn't matter. I'm useless to you. I'll just drag you down." Midoriya replied.

Aizawa bit his tongue. _Just what the heck did these villains tell him!? _

He grabbed the boy, and said, "You're coming with us, whether you like it or not."

Midoriya still didn't looked convinced anyhow, if his still deadpan expression said anything.

"You'll be useful to us." Nishiya said.

Aizawa and Yamada shot him a look that said _You do not treat him like a tool!_, but Midoriya just nodded and jumped, leaping off the pipes on the wall to grab the lid of the vents.

From the heroes vantage point, they accidentally caught a look under his shirt.

Yamada let out a small whine of shock, and Nishiya and Aizawa's eyes widened in shock.

They didn't notice it before, because he was wearing a black shirt, but he was bleeding from so many open wounds on his chest area, stomach and back.

_And he said he didn't know if he had any injuries._

Midoriya pulled the vent lid down, and Aizawa grabbed the boy with his capture weapon, setting him down. "Kid, don't do anything like that again. You're injured. You're gonna make it worse."

"Sorry. I made a mistake. I won't do it again."

_God dammit._ Aizawa internally hissed at the villains._ The poor boy just seemed to feel like no matter what he did, he was in the wrong. He was always wrong, and was useless. He just wants to be useful, like it would justify his existence._

He wanted to go find every single person in the damn world who made the poor child feel like it was wrong to even exist and punch them in the damn face.

Nishiya and Yamada made their way into the vents, and Aizawa grabbed the boy and pulled him up into the vents._ Gods he was light._

He had seen the boy's ribs from under his shirt. He was defiantly malnourished.

Once they were in the vents, Midoriya set off, crawling through the vents, and heroes followed suite.

"So…. um… kid…. do you have a name?" Yamada asked, "I don't think we should keep calling you kid."

"I don't remember my real name anymore. You can call me kid. It doesn't matter."

Okay. Aizawa had another reason to want to beat the villains black and blue. _What the heck did they do to him to make him forget his real, birth name!? Torture him?! Brainwash him!? _(Aizawa scolded himself. They had freaking Controller, of course they brainwashed him).

"Okay….um….. how do you know the way?" Yamada asked, confused, as Midoriya turned a corner, before turning again.

"I saw the map left on a table for a few minutes."

Midoriya turned another corner.

"I think we're lost." Nishiya said.

"You go straight past three more vents, turn right, go straight, turn left, straight past two more, turn left twice, then right, then straight past four more vents, then left, then right, then you're out." Midoriya replied blankly.

"I just… forgot the first ten steps." Yamada whispered.

Midoriya just led the way, twisting and turning through the vents, and sure enough, they popped out right at the entrance.

"What took you guys so long?" Enji snorted, "And you brought the useless kid? He's dragging you down."

"The place went on lockdown. Maybe if you had waited a bit?" Aizawa shot back, wanting to slap the Number Two hero right in the face for insulting the poor kid. He pulled Midoriya to his side, away from Enji, and snarled, "And he helped us. So don't you dare say he's useless."

Midoriya just looked at Aizawa in mild, very, very mild confusion.

_He's standing up for me?_

They walked out the melted door, Aizawa literally pulling the short green haired boy out, and Midoriya felt a weird ticking feeling, just in his neck.

On instinct, he shoved Aizawa away.

Pain blasted through his system.

* * *

Aizawa looked at the boy in pure confusion as he shoved him aside, and blinked. _Did I pull too hard?_

He watched, dumbfounded, as electricity set the child aglow, and Midoriya bit his lip, his eyes wide, as he clenched his fist and endured the electric attack that came from no where. Blood spilled from his lips, and he coughed.

He heard explosions, and suddenly, as fast as it came, whatever plaguing the boy disappeared, and he was left staring wide eyed as blood poured from fresh, new wounds on Midoriya's body, dripping down his limbs and onto the ground like some kind of twisted, nightmarish waterfall. He could see a bit of bone exposed, and he watched in horror as he fell over, and managed to catch the boy.

"I'm….. sorry….. I … didn't… know…. I'm…sorry…"

"Shh… stop apologising…" Aizawa said softly.

Midoriya felt his vision turn black.


	7. Chapter 7 - (Attempted) Healing Process

_Implants._

That one word left a nasty taste in Aizawa's mouth.

According to the information that Nishiya had found in the base, the kid they had picked up had been dubbed Akatani Mikumo, his real name wasn't stated in the database, depicted by a NA under the section of the spreadsheet under Real Names. He had implants embedded deep in his flesh in various locations, and the second the sensor that was embedded in his neck detected that he had left the base, it had sent a large electric shock through his system, harming the boy and activating the other implants, which were supposed to explode.

It wasn't aimed to kill. Aizawa realised. _It was aimed to hurt. To prevent him from moving. To make him bleed out, before dying. To ensure that he wouldn't have gotten out alive unless someone unluckily managed to stumble upon a bleeding body right outside their base._

That was just _plain cruel._

Aizawa was just glad they were around, and managed to save him and get him medical treatment.

Nezu and Aizawa had gone through the information they had.

They had read reports on what had happened to the boy.

Apparently, they picked him up two years ago wearing a uniform, with his skull split open, many broken bones, and a lot of blood loss. His bones were a lot stronger than a regular person's, and both the doctors and Aizawa had confirmed that yes, he was quirkless. That meant that his bones had been broken _a lot_, and healed, for them to be as strong as they were.

Something about a uniform, the date, and being quirkless, reminded him of Midoriya Izuku, the kid who supposedly was attacked and went missing. But it had been two years since then. He couldn't keep his hopes up.

But _Akatani Mikumo_ wasn't his real name…..

He couldn't save Midoriya. But at least he could help Akatani.

It only got worse. Apparently they tried to force a quirk onto the boy? _What? You couldn't just … give a quirk to someone. _But Aizawa just tried to ignore the grave look on Nezu's face. They were unsuccessful anyway, so he filed that matter at the back of his mind.

After that, they had practically tortured the poor boy. Ran tests on him because they were curious. Aizawa was seething when he read that they had shot a laser in his right eye and almost blinded it.

They also fed him lies, tried to break him, tried to make him forget who he was.

He had been broken.

_"We peered into his mind, and saw a purple haired boy who seemed to be very close to him._

_We told him he had died. He kept reinforcing it, and Mikumo eventually gave up."_

He did everything he was told, apparently. He analysed heroes and villains, never complained whenever he was beaten up, would always attack villains whenever he was told to do so. He was perfect, always listening to instructions, never making a sound, never complaining, never asking for anything, unless a hero or a civilian was involved.

Then he resisted.

He refused to hurt a hero, or a civilian. Controller had to force him to act every single time, and he eventually grew resistant enough to it for him to ignore his orders. That was when the shock collar came into play.

Aizawa felt sick.

He didn't know the kid personally, but seeing how he acted, how he felt about himself and the world, how he apologised for something that wasn't even within his sphere of control….

It never showed in his face, but his heart went out to the poor boy.

* * *

"How is he?" Aizawa asked. He was with Yamada and Nishiya, who had also apparently gotten slightly attached for them to visit the hospital to check on him.

"He's healing, but it's a lot slower that a regular person. We had to get several doctors with healing quirks just to ensure that he was healing right. Usually, a body would naturally try to recover from its injuries… but in his case…. it seems like his body had given up. It doesn't _want _to recover." The doctor sighed.

Aizawa bit his lip.

"We managed to heal him up to a hundred percent… but it's his mentality you might want to be worried about. Physically, he's fine now. But if even his body doesn't want to heal subconsciously, I'd say there's something really wrong with him."

Yamada just nodded.

"He had woken up a few hours ago…. according to the nurses, he didn't express any hint of emotion, and answered all their questions. He didn't know where he had gotten most of his scars from, and from the nurses, didn't seem to be in any pain."

_Yeah…. he was literally bleeding all over the place and he didn't seem to be in any pain either._

"Ah. One more thing. His vision is still perfectly fine, but one of his eyes is grey, probably from some heat source damaging the pigments in his eye. Other than that, he's doing… alright… I suppose, to put it nicely. He's going to need a lot of help."

_Probably the laser. _None of them had noticed the eye discolouration, probably because they were preoccupied with other things, like escaping a lockdown._ Dammit Endeavor._

"Alright. Thank you."

* * *

The three heroes entered the room, and Midoriya turned to look at them from the bed.

"How you doing, kid?" Aizawa asked. It didn't feel right calling him Akatani Mikumo when they all knew that wasn't the child's real name.

"I'm alive."

Aizawa internally sighed. The poor kid's mentally was messed up.

He tried again.

"Are you happy? Sad? Scared?"

Midoriya shook his head.

Yamada scratched his neck. He was wearing his civilian clothing, and Aizawa decided to test the boy on some stuff. He pointed to Yamada, and asked, "Who's that?"

Yamada was about to protest when Midoriya blinked, "Hero name, Present Mic. Real name, Yamada Hizashi."

Aizawa had noticed that Midoriya had rambled off Enji, Nishiya and Yamada's information in the base in a specific order. Hero name, age, height, blood type, rank, quirk, support items, other battle information. How he knew their ages and blood types, he didn't know, but it was pretty impressive that the kid actually knew more about them than Controller. That meant that he was a vital part of their operations, as unwilling, or willing, as he was.

"Look. I've been meaning to ask you. You told Controller everything about Endeavor, Kamui Woods and Present Mic, but not about me. But you clearly knew about me. Why?"

"I did what I was told. You're an underground hero and the less that they know about you, the better." Midoriya said as if that was the stupidest question Aizawa had ever asked, even though his expression never changed the entire time so far.

"Okay. Lemme get this straight." Nishiya tried to ask, "You followed the order, which was to give our profiles. You just didn't tell Eraser Head's to Controller, so you were technically following the order."

Midoriya nodded.

Suddenly, the door knocked, and Nezu and Tsukauchi entered the room.

"Ah. I wasn't expecting him to be awake already." Nezu grinned.

Tsukauchi just bowed, and turned to Aizawa, "I was originally looking for you guys to get your reports…. but I suppose we also have another eyewitness?"

Aizawa just looked over at Midoriya, "Are you up for answering some questions?"

Midoriya nodded again.

Tsukauchi sat down on a chair, and took out a piece of paper, "Alright… what's your name?"

"I don't remember."

_True._

"Um… what about this ….Akatani Mikumo?"

"That's not my real name."

_True._

"Alright…. do you know how old are you?"

"No."

_True._

"Doctors say he's fourteen." Yamada offered, and Tsukauchi scribbled the information down.

"What's your quirk?"

"Quirkless. Sensei tried to give me a quirk but I just rejected it."

_True. True._

Nezu and Tsukauchi sat up straighter. "This man… he tried to what?"

"He offered me to join them and give me a quirk. I said no. He tried to force it into me. I refused to accept it."

_True. True. True. True. _

"Alright… why didn't you want to accept it?"

"He's a villain and doing so would be wrong."

_True. _

"Do you remember how you felt when that happened?"

"It just felt wrong to take a quirk from a villain. That's it."

_True. True. _

Aizawa swallowed his saliva. They tried to recruit him. And he rejected it. Not because of any personal feelings or anything, but because it was wrong. Not because he was scared, or felt threatened, or panicked, _but because it was wrong_.

The poor kid's EQ was already messed up before this entire thing.

He just wanted to wrap him in his sleeping bag and just… sleep.

Tsukauchi grit his teeth, before asking, "Did they do anything to you?"

"Shigaraki disintegrated me. They shot a laser in my eye, this doctor liked to cut me up, they also stabbed me, and punched me a lot. They made me fight other villains, and mind controlled me to fight heroes and civilians."

_True. True. True. _

Tsukauchi was busy scribbling on his paper.

"Uh huh…. who's Shigaraki?"

Aizawa, Nishiya and Yamada braced himself for whatever Midoriya had to say.

"Name, Shigaraki Tomura. Age, twenty. Height, 1.75 cm. Quirk, Decay. It allows him to disintegrate anything as long as all five fingers of one hand are in contact with the item. Weakness, his quirk is not activated voluntarily, and will disintegrate anything without fail. The quirk will not activate when in contact with fluids or particles such as water or sand. No significant support items, but he has fourteen hands that are all shaped so they're holding onto him. He is the most attached the the hand on his face that he calls "Father". He is fast and strong, and smart as well. He throws temper tantrums sometimes and is fond of video games."

Tsukauchi was too busy registering everything as true and scribbling down everything he had said. Aizawa did notice that this time, Midoriya had added in "Weakness".

"Was there anyone else? Can you remember any names?" Aizawa swore that Tsukauchi had gotten tired of scribbling so much when he handed over a pencil and some paper to Midoriya.

They didn't expect Midoriya to take the pencil and paper, and start drawing.

They didn't expect Midoriya to _actually_ draw every single villain out. There was Shigaraki, the guy with the hands all over the place, there was someone wearing a suit and had some misty head, called Kurogiri if the scribbling beside that drawing meant anything, as well as another guy with glasses and a lab coat. There was another one labelled Sensei, but he was wearing a suit, had no eyes, just a mouth. The rest of the drawings, Midoirya has scribbled the word "Normal" on it, seemed to be a large bunch of thugs that they had picked off the streets.

How he managed to make such good sketches without using an eraser, or so quickly, Aizawa didn't know. Tsukauchi looked lost for words and Nezu was just grinning at Midoriya weirdly.

He then went about explaining every single person's abilities, stats, name, and other information, save for Sensei. Apparently he didn't know much about sensei other than his appearing and his apparent quirk that was able to give other people quirks.

Midoriya just looked at Tsukauchi blankly as he compiled his notes.

"I think… that's enough for now. How are you feeling?"

"I'm alive."

_True._

Tsukauchi just looked utterly confused at the reply, and Aizawa sighed, "He's been saying that every time we asked. We're all confused here."

His phone buzzed, and Tsukauchi took a quick look before sighing, "Well… rest up. Looks like All Might got another batch of villains." He stood up, and turned to leave.

* * *

"So… we can't just leave him here. And Kamui Woods is the Number Six hero. We can't expect him to take him in. And there's no way I'm letting Endeavor get any closer to him than possible." Yamada said. He was pretty much close to crying. They had tried to hold a conversation, but it seemed like Midoriya didn't even seem to know, or wasn't willing to do that. He would answer questions, but would make no attempt to continue it. He had never met someone who just acted so…. robotic, so emotionless, and Yamada was_ that close_ to pulling his hair out in frustration.

"Well… once he's discharged someone will have to have custody over him. He's a minor. We don't know if he has any family, and he can't consent to a DNA test in this state. Hell, he'll probably allow anyone to experiment on him as long as he thinks it makes him useful." Aizawa slumped over the table, and subconsciously ran his fingers through his hair.

"You think we can clear out the spare room for him?"

That question was unexpectedly asked by Aizawa.

"You mean…. We can adopt him?!" Yamada asked, eyes shining.

"Not exactly adopting. We can let him stay with us. Once he's mentally well, and is capable of making his own decisions, we can let him choose." Aizawa shrugged. "You're clearing the room though. I have patrol tonight, and then I need to speak with Nezu about the arrangements tomorrow. The UA entrance exams are in a month and I swear… I need to someone get it through someone's thick skull that we can't use robots."

"Gotcha!" Yamada grinned, "Leave it to me!"

* * *

In the end, Aizawa did have to help Yamada clear the room. There was just too much junk, most of it Yamada's. They had to move everything and shove them into the closet in Yamada's room. The empty room now stood bare and empty. Aizawa and Yamada shared an apartment. There were three rooms along an hallway that led into the dining room, and Aizawa had the room closest to the exit as he was always going out in the middle of the night. Yamada had the one furthest from the dining room, because he blasted music and Aizawa often did complain that it was too loud for him to sleep. The empty room stood between them both, and Aizawa supposed that was alright. He was protected on both sides.

"So…. do we get a bed?"

"Sure." Aizawa shrugged.

* * *

"Ok."

Aizawa and Yamada just looked at the kid. They were kinda expecting him to protest or something, but they supposed that Midoriya wasn't really in the right state of mind to give his opinion. Heck, he just did what he was told.

"You know… you can speak whenever you want, right?" Yamada said.

Midoriya shook his head.

"Any… reason why?" Aizawa asked.

"Whenever I speak without permission, they stab me."

Aizawa clicked his tongue. _Stupid f***ing villains._

"I promise you we're not like them. You can say whatever you want, whenever you want, and we'll listen. We won't push you away, we won't hurt you, we won't tell you to shut up. Got it."

Midoriya nodded, but Aizawa wondered how long it would take for him to change habits that had been ingrained so deeply into his mind.

* * *

Eating seemed to be a…. new thing for him. On the first day he was staying with the two pro heroes, he just looked at the plate blankly, before looking at Yamada and Aizawa, before eating everything on his plate. Later on, he ended up throwing everything back up, all the while apologising as Aizawa tried to help the boy clean up.

"Why didn't you tell us you couldn't handle it. You didn't have to eat everything." Aizawa sighed.

"Sorry." Midoriya wiped his mouth with tissue, "I didn't want to bother you."

"Jeez. Look, if you're not used to eating that much, tell us. We'll give you smaller portions and slowly work it up to normal portions, okay?"

Midoriya blankly nodded.

They had slowly tried to lessen the portions of Midoriya ate, but it seemed that Midoriya was still unable to shake the mindset that initiating a conversation was being a burden and annoying them, and refused to waste food either. He ate everything on his plate, and continued to throw them back up.

Eventually, much to Aizawa and Yamada's chagrin, they found that Midoriya ate very, very little. Far too little. He was content with like… a spoonful of rice, and a couple of vegetables. No wonder he was so badly malnourished, he was practically eating nothing.

They tried to do things that normal kids would like, such as watching movies. Midoriya had let Yamada wrap his arm around him during the movie, and they thought that was an improvement.

Apparently, it wasn't.

Midoriya had admitted that he only let Yamada hug him because he thought it made him feel better.

Aizawa and Yamada were at a loss at how to help the kid.

* * *

A month had passed. Midoriya had not gotten any better. He was still too thin, too light, too expressionless. Aizawa and Yamada had called in Tensei to look over Midoriya while they helped out with the school entrance exam. It wasn't that they didn't trust Midoriya, heck, the second last time they left the house, with Midoriya on his own, they panicked because the boy had decided to clean the outside of the windows by standing on the window ledge and wiping the windows. Aizawa had subtly freaked out and lashed the boy back with his capture weapon, and Yamada had caught him, before questioning his actions.

"I'm sorry. I'm just being a burden and I'm not doing anything. I want to be useful and help."

After giving the small boy a short lecture about not needing to help out, and that his actions were dangerous, they thought that it would be fine.

They were wrong.

The very last time they left Midoriya alone in the house while they went out to grab dinner, they ended up coming home really late because they are caught up in a villain attack, and came home three hours later, only to find Midoriya staring at the door in exactly the same position and posture as they had left.

The problem got worse.

He hardly slept. Heck, even Aizawa relied on juice packets and coffee all the time in order to go through his tedious routine. Midoriya just… slept about thirty minutes a day. They even got Kayama over to try and use her quirk, but the maximum Midoriya stayed asleep for was an hour.

_How!?_

_Just how!?_

Heck, even Shuzenji had no idea how the boy managed to fuction. The best they guess was that those vile villains had _trained_ him like that, like he was some kind of lesser being, not even human. Pain was a very good motivator, and breaking the poor kid's mind only served to make him give in faster.

One of the students had seen Midoriya in the infirmary and called him weird, and Aizawa had just happened to overhear it. He would have expelled him immediately if not for the fact that he wasn't the student's teacher. He just gave him a super long lecture that had the student apologising to Midoriya ten times, Midoriya apologising back for being in the way, and Aizawa finally getting sick of this chain of apologies and sent the student back to lessons with a late slip for why he was late - insulting Midoriya.

His teacher was Snipe, apparently, who was familiar with the green haired child from the few times they brought him to UA for health checks, or for Nezu to talk to the boy. Most of the teachers were at this point, and also tried to help out. Thirteen had used red markers to draw fake eyebrows over their eyes, Kayama had stolen Aizawa's capture weapon and hung Yamada upside down like a piñata, heck even Snipe was playing the kazoo in front of the kid, to no avail.

That's why, instead of bringing Midoriya to UA like usual, they had asked Tensei. They thought a new face might be refreshing for the poor boy who seemed to feel like he owed the world something. The turbo hero was on leave, and while they did feel bad about calling the hero while he was supposed to relax, he usually spent his leave days with his younger brother, Iida Tenya, who was taking the exam, so Tensei didn't mind hanging out with a child who was the same age as his brother.

Aizawa looked on in interest as he spotted a purple haired boy rush around, grabbing broken pipes off the ground and jabbing them into the joints of the robots, destroying them. "Who's that?"

"Shinsou Hitoshi. Brainwashing quirk."

Aizawa kept an eye on the boy. His quirk wasn't suited for dealing with the robots, yet here he was, destroying robot after robot with nothing but broken scraps.

Even if he didn't pass, Aizawa wanted to keep an eye on him. He was practically taking the trial quirkless, and was doing decently. If he got into General Education, maybe he'd offer to train him before the Sports Festival.

"Shouta. No. We're already having trouble with one child."

"I wasn't planning on adopting him."

"I never said you wanted to. You practically admitted it." Yamada accused.

Aizawa huffed internally. He did not want to adopt Shinsou. He just thought he had potential.

* * *

Nezu had decided to let Midoriya into UA's hero course. The knowledge that Midoriya had possessed about various villains allowed them to take several of them down, and Nezu felt that was more than enough for Midoriya to prove himself. He also thought it might be better for him to interact with people his age, and stuck him in Aizawa's homeroom class.

Which came to the was one less spot for the regular students who entered through the entrance exams. They had four recommendation students, which meant they could accept thirty six entrance exam students. With the addition of Midoriya, they could only accept thirty five.

There were thirty five students who had passed the entrance exam.

Shinsou Hitoshi had gotten thirty sixth, barely getting to minimum required points from both villain and rescue points.

Aizawa bit his lip. Based on the rankings, they couldn't accept Shinsou into the hero course. He had potential… it was just a pity that the entrance exam was _freaking robots._

He just hoped that Shinsou's will to be a hero lasted until the Sports Festival.


	8. Chapter 8 - Emotionless Realisation

Shinsou stared at his letter of rejection.

He had gotten into General Studies for UA, but was rejected for the Hero Course. Of course. They were robots.

_Izu mentioned that there was another chance… during the Sports Festival._

Shinsou grasped the old, ten year old notebook in his hand.

_One more chance. He could do this._

_Izu died because the world deemed him unfit to live._

He himself was deemed unable to be a hero because of his quirk.

He would prove them all wrong, not just to spite every single person in the world that put him and Midoriya down, but to take the chance and be the hero that his little brother had been denied the chance to be.

* * *

"Alright. We registered you as Akatani Mikumo. Once we managed to figure out your real name, we'll change it, okay? We can't let everyone in your class call you kid all the time, alright?"

Midoriya nodded. He knew his way around UA already, but Aizawa didn't want to let Midoriya go on his own, seeing his mentality was still rather screwed up. The teachers had given Midoriya a small name list of his class to analyse, so he would at least know who he was interacting with. Midoriya pushed open the door, and looked on as a blue haired boy stomped up to him.

"My name is Iida Tenya! I -"

Apparently, Midoriya took this as a cue for him to finish Iida's introduction.

"Name, Iida Tenya. Age, 15. Height, 1.79 metres. Blood Type, A. Middle school, Somei Academy. Quirk, Engine. It allows you to increase you speed by up to three gears."

Iida just stared dumbfounded as Midoriya just gave a profile of him.

"You're not supposed to do that." Aizawa deadpanned, glancing at Midoriya.

"Sorry."

"No.. that's.. fine…" Iida was still stunned, when another blond pushed him out of the way, and his palm exploded inches from his face, "You! What do you know about me, fucking extra!?"

Midoriya didn't flinch, "Name, Bakugou Katsuki. Age, 15. Height, 1.72 metres. Blood Type, A. Middle school, Aldera Junior High. Quirk, Explosion. It allows you to excrete nitroglycerin-like sweat from your palms and ignite it at will, creating explosions."

"Ohh! Me next!" A red haired boy yelled.

"Name, Kirishima Eijiro. Age, 15. Height, 1.70 metres. Blood Type, O. Middle school…"

Aizawa sighed. This lesson was going to go on forever if he didn't do anything.

"Go somewhere else to play at being friends. This is the hero course."

Everyone quietened down, and Aizawa continued, "Took you all eight seconds to quiet down. I'm Aizawa Shouta, your homeroom teacher. You need to be more rational. Get changed and meet me at the field."

The hero procured twenty gym uniforms from nowhere, and everyone rushed to get changed.

* * *

Midoriya had opted to change in one of the stalls. Yamada has mentioned that some of the students might be freaked out by the scars and he had opted to prevent anyone from freaking out.

"Dude… are you okay?" Kirishima asked.

Midoriya felt everyone looking at him, and turned around, blinking in mild confusion.

"You're uniform is long sleeved."

Midoriya nodded. Aizawa had specifically requested for a long sleeved gym uniform for him to hide the scars on his arms.

He walked out of the changing room, into the searing heat under the sun.

"Aren't you hot in that?" Uraraka asked.

"My comfort doesn't matter." Midoriya replied, not noticing the concerned glances the rest of his classmates (minus Bakugou) was giving him.

Aizawa was kind of regretting giving Midoriya a long sleeved uniform.

* * *

"A quirk assessment test?" Everyone exclaimed. Midoriya just remained silent, not really caring.

Aizawa called up Bakugou to throw a softball.

"In junior high, you guys weren't allowed to use your quirks for you gym results. Bakugou, what was your best result for the softball throw?"

"67 metres"

Aizawa ordered him to use his quirk to throw the ball. Bakugou grabbed the softball from him and yelled, "DIE!"

Aizawa's device beeped. 705.3 metres.

Someone said it looked fun and then Aizawa threatened to expel the person who came in last overall, as he would have deemed them as having no potential.

_That's not logical. _Midoriya thought. _But just in case he wasn't joking…._

* * *

Aizawa just looked completely defeated by Midoriya. He had flunked every single of the eight tests, resulting in coming in dead last, leaving Aizawa in a complete state of confusion.

_I swear.. if his stupid sense of self-worth is the reason behind this…._

"Why did you do so badly on purpose?" Aizawa asked.

"I'm just dragging everyone down here. I didn't want you to expel anyone."

Everyone was just staring at Midoriya in bewilderment, and the boy with purple orbs on his head, Mineta, had started tearing up.

"It's a logical ruse to make everyone do their best." Aizawa sighed, "I should have known you would react negatively to that. Go and redo every single test. I'm not going to expel anyone, so do your best."

Midoriya nodded, and grabbed the softball. 120 metres. Far better than his initial try of 10 metres.

The entire class was just surprised at the huge improvement in Midoriya's results.

He originally did twenty sit ups. Now he did a hundred and fifty seven.

Standing long jump, Midoriya originally got 1 metre. It became 3.7 metres.

18.3 seconds for the 50 metre dash turned to 4.79 seconds.

Seated-toe touches. Midoriya didn't even try the first time, getting a forty-five degree angle. Now the angle was zero degrees.

For the grip test, he had gotten eighty two kilograms compared to his original seven.

Repeated sidesteps, Midoriya's score had increased by at least ten times.

Long distance run. Midoriya just kept on going. Aizawa had requested Yaoyorozu take this test alongside Midoriya to get a comparison, and not only did Midoriya _keep up_ with the scooter she had made, he had over taken it and was racing around the track at record speed.

Everyone was just gawking. Midoriya was able to get first based on his results, but had decided to get last to protect them all!?

_Uraraka and Iida had already decided (unknowing to the other person) that they needed to protect this poor kid who thought he had to suffer to protect everyone else._

"YOU! You think I need your help and pity!?" Bakugou roared, "Who the fuck do you think you are, extra!?"

Midoriya made no movement to avoid Bakugou's imminent attack. Instead, Aizawa had to tie Bakugou up in his capture weapon and erase his quirk.

"Akatani. Go get changed first. I need to address the rest of the class."

Midoriya nodded, and headed back to change.

"Sensei… is he okay?" Hagakure asked.

"Physically, yes. Mentally, no. This is a personal matter, but something happened to him before. You all saw how much he was willing to sacrifice everything for you all to pass. You better not take advantage of him." Aizawa growled. "Bakugou, he will not make any attempt to dodge, as far as I know, and will let you attack him. You better not."

Bakugou nodded, completely shocked, though he was still frowning.

_What the heck had happened to him for him to be like this?_

* * *

Nezu was eating lunch with Midoriya (more like Nezu was eating and Midoriya was watching emotionlessly), and Aizawa slumped in his chair, his forehead pressed against his keyboard.

"Ya okay, Shouta?" Kayama asked.

"He flunked the test. On purpose. Because I pulled a logical ruse." Aizawa sighed. He regretted doing that. He had made Midoriya think that in order to protect everyone else, he had to be the self elected martyr. He didn't_ want_ to do that to Midoriya, and yet he had completely forgotten about it when he decided that the other hero students were playing around.

"He did what!?" Yamada shrieked.

"He got last. On purpose. I made him redo all the tests, and I had to explain that I was just joking about the expulsion. Then he got first." Aizawa groaned. "He's strong, but he's just not willing to make anyone suffer because of him. Just what did those villains do to make him feel like he _had to be the sacrificial scapegoat? _That he had to_ suffer _for the better good?!"

"Hey, cheer up." Yamada pat Aizawa's back, "We'll get through to him eventually."

* * *

The next day was pretty mundane. Teachers came and went, kept an eye on Midoriya, taught the class, and left.

"Um….Akatani-chan? Do you want to eat lunch with us?" Asui asked.

She was with Uraraka and Iida, and they had decided after the previous day's spectacle, that they had to keep Midoriya safe.

They got no response, and realised that Midoriya was sleeping, head against the desk as he breathed.

"I suggest letting him sleep." Aizawa's voice rang out. The three student's turned, and saw the pro hero enter the room, dumping a juice pack on Midoriya's desk. "He only sleeps around …. an hour, at the very maximum, a day, so I'm glad he's actually sleeping now."

"Aizawa-senpai, kero, what happened to him?"

"It's not my place to say. Maybe… he'll open up one day." Aizawa sighed.

* * *

Yagi burst into the room, "I am... coming through the door like a normal person!"

Midoriya's expression was just deadpan as the rest of the class erupted into chaos, gushing over the Number One Hero. "It's All Might!" "That's the costume from the Silver Age, isn't it?!" "Wow! He really is a teacher!"

Aizawa sighed. Even the presence of the Number One hero wasn't fazing the boy.

"I teach Basic Hero Training. It's a subject where you train in different ways to learn the basics of being a hero. Let's get right into it! What you will do today is... Combat Training!" He then pressed a button, and several shelves with numbers popped out.

"After you all change, gather in Gym Gamma!"

* * *

Aizawa made an oversight. Midoriya did not have a costume.

Or so it would seem. Nezu seemed to have it covered, somehow.

Midoriya emerged from the changing room wearing bright red high cut sports shoes, a dark green pair of track pants with a red belt around his waist. He donned white forearm sleeves and black fingerless gloves hat covered up most of his arms, hiding most of his scars. There was a metal mask that sat around his neck, and he wore a thin, black short sleeved hoodie that covered up his shoulders.

"You okay wearing that?"

"It's fine."

Aizawa bit his lip. He was still unable to get as much as a proper response to that kind of questions.

* * *

"For this class, we will pair you up randomly and you'll fight your partner."

Midoriya ended up paired with Kirishima."

"Hey! Is that even fair?" Kirishima asked.

"We'll… we all saw that Akatani is pretty strong…. right?" Kaminari replied.

"Just wait and see." Jiro sighed.

It didn't take long for it to be Kirishima and Midoriya's turn.

"Kid, I want you to try, but don't go too far, got it? Don't kill anyone." Aizawa said, and Midoriya nodded.

"And go!" Yagi announced.

Midoriya shot forward in a flash, ducking under Kirishima's arms as he attempted to retaliate. He leapt upwards, and brought his leg downwards. Kirishimamanaged to dodge the kick right as Midoriya brought his foot down, and everyone was downright horrified when the dust settled to reveal a crater the one ground where Midoriya's foot made contact with the ground. Midoriya didn't seem to be in any pain, and lashed out again, nailing Kirishima in the arms, who had tried to defend himself, and the impact from the kick managed to send Kirishima barely sliding over the line.

Kirishima fell on his butt, and blinked, rubbing his arms that had turned red even under the affects of his quirk.

"Sorry." Midoriya apologised, sticking out his hand to help Kirishima up.

"Holy crap." Kirishima gasped, taking the hand, "That's so manly."

Midoriya pulled him up with no problems whatsoever.

"That was awesome!"

Midoriya just blinked in confusion.

_It was awesome?_

"You okay there?" Kirishima asked, seeing the blank look on Midoriya's face.

Midoriya nodded.

* * *

If there were some things that 1-A had learnt about Midoriya, as Akatani Mikumo, it was that he had no emotions whatsoever.

Koda, Shoji and Sato tried to hold a conversation with the boy, only for them to be at a loss when Midoriya made no attempt to advance the conversation. Midoriya was the only one who was able to tolerate Aoyoma's entire glittery, shiny talk, but apologised when Aoyoma bumped into Todoroki accidentally. Ashido, Kaminari, Sero and Kirishima had tried do anything they could to make the boy laugh before lessons started, to no avail. Midoriya had apologised when he saw their devastated faces for not making a reaction. Bakugou had tried to force Midoriya to react by yelling really, really nasty words, hoping that the boy would finally yell back in anger. Midoriya still had no reaction. Mineta himself had tried to stick Midoriya to the chair with his sticky orbs to try to get a reaction out of the stoic boy, and Midoriya just kept on apologising when he stood up to answer a question and his pants was stuck to the chair, leaving him in his boxers.

Uraraka and Jiro had tried to find Midoriya's tickling spots, and Midoriya just let them poke around everywhere, not making a single sound, and apologised yet again upon seeing their disappointed faces. Hagakure and Asui tried to sneak up on him, but Midoriya either knew they were there or was just not shocked at all when Asui's tongue poked him from nowhere, or Hagakure lunged on him, apologising for getting in their way instead. Dark Shadow tried to make a nest out of Midoriya's messy green hair, and Midoriya had apologised, again, to Dark Shadow, when Tokoyami called the bird quirk out. Yaoyorozu, Ojiro, and Iida had tried tickle Midoriya with feathers, Ojiro's tail, and an assortment of other things, but Midoriya just sneezed and apologised for sneezing, as if sneezing was some sort of crime.

They realised, in those few days, that Midoriya apologised a lot.

No matter if he was the one in the wrong or not.

Regardless if he was even involved in the incident.

Even if the child wasn't in the same room, he would still apologise. That was the only thing they heard him say that wasn't a short reply to a question, followed by awkward silence between everyone.

He never spoke unless he was asked a question, and if he could answer with a nod or shake of his head, he would do that instead.

Heck, he didn't even seem affected when the alarms in school rang, and everyone was stampeding arounf in the hallways. According to Jiro and Yaoyorozu, who had just happened to be in the classroom, had mentioned that Midoriya had woken up, looked around, grabbed the juice packet that Aizawa always left him, and started drinking it. When he realised that both girls were looking at him, he turned around and apologised for bothering them.

None of them could understand it. It was not normal. It wasn't natural to be so apathetic to everything. It wasn't normal to be srry for every single thing you did.

_Why the heck was he blaming himself for every single thing that went wrong!?_

* * *

"For today's hero training, we will have three instructors. All Might, me, and one more person. We will be doing rescue training. Disasters, shipwrecks, and everything in between. You choose if you want to wear your costume or not, since some of your costumes might hinder your abilities. But it is recommended so you can learn how to adapt in situations later on." Aizawa said.

* * *

"Ne, Akatani-chan,"Asui addressed, "I've been wondering... you seem to know a lot about everyone, but you're never really revealed your quirk."

Midoriya just glanced at Asui.

"Do you have some sort of strength quirk?"

Midoriya shock his head.

"Oh! Memory quirk!" Kirishima suggested.

Another shake of his head.

"Mmmm. Intelligence quirk!" Kaminari pipped up.

Another shake of his head.

Pretty soon, everyone in the class was suggesting what Midoriya's quirk might be, but all they got were Midoriya shaking his head.

"Quiet down. We'll be there soon."Aizawa mumbled.

* * *

Thirteen was explaining about the dangers of thei quirks when suddenly, the lights started flickering. Midoriya turned to look at the lights warily, before the fountain started splutering, as if it was choking.

A portal emerged from nowhere, and a large, hulking black figure emerged, as well as a man covered in hands.

Aizawa reconised him as Shigaraki Tomura, from Midoriya's drawing. He also reconised Kurogiri from the purple mist.

"Is this like the entrance exam where the lesson's already started?" Kirishima asked as he looked down the stairs, right at the villains.

Midoriya just stared blankly at the villains as they kept pouring into the USJ through the portal.

"Haa? The schedule said Eraser Head, All Might and Thirteen will be here. I went through the trouble to bring this whole crowd to kill the Symbol of Peace, and he's not here? I wonder if he'll come if we kill some kids." Shigaraki snorted.

"Thirteen. Protect the students." Aizawa ordered, grabbing his capture weapon with one hand as he surveyed the area. Besides from Shigaraki, and Kurogiri, none of the villains seemed similar to those in Midoriya's drawings. "Akatani, weaknesses of Shigaraki and Kurogiri?"

"Shigaraki's Decay quirk works involuntarily through contact with all five fingers. His quirk will not activate when in contact with fluids or particles such as water or sand, and he is the most attached the the hand on his face that he calls "Father". Kurogiri can teleport and warp things by coordinates. He covers himself in mist, but his metal neck collar that is not mist is the physical part of his body and is where to attack."

Aizawa nodded, "Anything else regarding the situtation?"

"They're most likely jamming communications as they are attacking an isolated facility. They most likely obtained today's schedule yesterday during the break in and didn't know All Might isn't here. The black figure is the most likely opponent for All Might."

Aizawa clicked his tongue, "Kaminiri, can you try to contact the school?"

"He's right. The signal is jammed."

"Akatani, I want you to analyse the situation and find the best course of action, and immediately excecute it. Use you're classmates and any other resources we have at hand, and fight if necessary. Thirteen, if he has a plan, listen to him." Aizawa ordered.

Everyone looked at Aizawa, surprised that he would give such authority to Midoriya.

"Iida-kun should use his quirk to alert the school immediately. Thirteen-san should help him break down the door if it's stuck. Keep and eye on Kurogi as he can cover large distances instantaneously. You should take down the large hoarde of villains with Todoroki-kun and Jiro-san, as they can do long distance attacks and defend the students from here. Kaminari-kun should only attack as a last resort as he has no directional control. I do not suggest getting too close to the plaza or you'll be at the black figure's mercy." Midoriya said immediately.

"Well, go!" Aizawa groaned, leaping down the stairs and jumped right into the heart of the group of villains, taking care to keep an eye on Kurogiri like Midoriya said.

Todoroki and Jiro were picking off the stragglers that had gotten past Aizawa.

The second Aizawa turned away from him, Kurogiri warped to the entrance, but it was already too late. Thirteen had already sucked up the door, and Iida raced out of the facility.

He groaned.

"You golden eggs are better than expected."

He blinked at the familiar presence in front of him, but he couldn'ty really place it. He didn't recognise any of the kids here... but one of the children had a black hood over his head.

"You. Take off your hood."

"Wait! Don't!" Uraraka and Yaoyorozu tried to stop Midoriya from following the order, but it was already too late.

The black hood fell off, revealing a mop of fluffy green black hair, freckles, and mismatched grey and green eyes that appeared as emotionless as their owner was deadpan.

Kurogiri looked sick, if you could even see expressions from a wisp of purple mist and two yellow eyes.

"You... you should be dead."


	9. Chapter 9 - USJ

Midoriya just stared back at Kurogiri blankly.

If Kurogiri was being honest with himself, he felt bad for the boy. He was one of the few that had seen the boy's memories with Sensei's quirk. He had seen the boy get bullied all his life. He had seen him commit suicide. He had watched the entire process of Shigaraki and the other villains breaking the boy's mentality. He watched him try to resist. He knew the inevitable when the heroes came and he had to teleport Controller away. Midoriya would listen to the heroes, and knowing them, they would convince the boy to leave the base. He would be electrocuted and bleed out from the injuries caused by the implants.

So to be honest, to see the boy looking at him with the same deadpan expression he was so used to, instead of being on the verge of bleeding out and dying was a relief to the misty villain.

But he wasn't honest with his feelings, so all he felt was annoyance at the child that was supposed to be dead. "You know, I wonder why they even let you in here. You're just a tool. Something people use, then eventually throw away."

"Hey! That's super rude and unmanly!" Kirishima retorted. Bakugou let some explosions dance on his palms.

_"Fight if necessary"_

Aizawa's words rang in his mind.

Kurogiri sighed, "I still have my job to do, I guess…." He attempted to extend his mist to teleport the students away, but Midoriya struck immediately, lashing out and kicking Kurogiri right in his metal neck plates. Kurogiri stumbled down, and Midoriya landed, placing a foot on his neck plates. "You always did have a soft spot for heroes, didn't you?" Kurogiri replied, before pushing the smaller, lighter boy off him.

"It's wrong to attack people just to kill them."

Kurogiri shook his head patronisingly, "You're made to be a villain. The world broke you, tore you to bits, almost killed you, and yet you still side with them."

Midoriya made no reply, and Kurogiri internally berated himself for forgetting that he would not respond unless asked a question or an order, "Why?"

"You did the same as well."

"Well… that can't be helped. The world will always be prejudiced against the quirkless after all."

"Wait, Akatani, who's quirkless?!" Kaminari asked, looking around.

"Me." Midoriya replied.

"No way…. " Mineta mumbled.

"We're gonna need some help here!" Jiro yelled as she blasted another villain away. "There's too many here with long ranged and short ranged quirks."

Tokoyami and Ashido set about helping them to take out the longer ranged villains. Kurogiri disrupted their little conversation by teleporting a group of villains in front of them. They all activated their various quirks and rushed the students, and Asui yelped, "Kero, Akatani, watch -"

She blinked, realising that Midoriya had already moved. He lunged, kicking two villains swiftly in the chest, sending them tumbling into a few more villains. They crashed into the railing and dented the metal. Midoriya snatched a knife out another villains grasp, smashing the hilt into another guy with a rock quirk before kicking the former holder of the knife in the head. He kicked another two into the railing, before slashing the last villain away with the knife.

Thirteen saw how the boy moved. He had purposely used the blunt end of the knife so he wouldn't grievously injure them. He just wanted to knock them out of the way, not kill. He knew what he was doing.

"Still as sharp as ever, aren't you?" Kurogiri sighed patronisingly. "You do realise no one will appreciate you, right? You'll just be thrown aside when it's all done. Just step aside and let me do my job."

_Maybe he did have a small soft spot for the poor little green haired child that was on the verge of death when they found him._

"I just want to be useful. It doesn't matter if anyone cares." Midoriya replied emotionlessly.

_He just wanted to be useful!? Who the heck had told him otherwise? He was so sweet, and cared about other people over himself. _Uraraka had to resist her urge to just cuddle and hug the poor boy there and then.

"Tch." Kurogiri was at a loss of what to do now. They already got a student out, it was only a matter of time before the pros got here. He immediately teleported Shigaraki and the hulking black figure to his location.

"Kurogiri, what is this for? Why are all the students still here? We agreed that we should scatter and disperse them, no?" Shigaraki scratched his neck as the black figure looked blankly ahead.

"A student got out before I even got here." Kurogiri reported, "And the child is here."

"Oh?" Shigaraki turned to face the students, catching sight of one familiar broken boy. "Brat. This would be more fun than I thought."

* * *

Seeing Shigaraki and the black figure disappear into the mist, Aizawa turned back to his students, alarmed, but was surrounded by too many villains for him to pick off at the same time.

_Dammit, All Might. You just had to pick today to overuse your hero form. I'm pinning this one on you._

But putting the blame on anyone would not change anything if any of his students died. Especially Akatani Mikumo, or… whatever his real name was. He had gone through too much at the hands of those villains, and for them to come back and kill him would be too much.

_If they took him back…_

Aizawa didn't even want to entertain that thought.

He needed to get back to his students. He had to.

He needed to protect them.

_They didn't need to see this side of the world yet._

* * *

Kurogiri ended up warping a huge amount of villains to the entrance platform.

There were too many for Midoriya to handle on his own. Ojiro and Hagakure had teamed up, trying to take down opponents. Uraraka and Aoyoma were standing back to back, while Shoji tried to hold off a few villains on his own. Yaoyorozu had handed out weapons to Kaminari and Koda, and everyone else was doing their best to beat the villains that they had found themselves tangled with.

They weren't doing so well.

These weren't normal cannon fodder. These villains actually knew what they were doing, and were slowly adapting their tactics in order to take out the students.

Sero ended up tangled in his own tape. Kaminari had short circuited when he panicked, and ended up taking Asui and Tokoyami out by accident. Mineta was lying on a crater on the ground, when a villain had smashed Shoji right into the ground on top of him. Uraraka, Todoroki, Jiro, Yaoyorozu, Kirishima, and Bakugou were cornered, all of them worn out and panting. Kurogiri had already teleported everyone else away, and had turned Thirteen's quirk back on them when they attempted to suck up the mist villain.

The only one who was actually standing a chance was Midoriya, and that was only because he didn't feel tired. His stamina was a lot better than this classmates, and allowed him to continue his recently onslaught on the villains that someone just kept getting up.

But he knew his classmates couldn't hold out any longer.

"Stop this. Please."

Shigaraki tilted his head, grinning, "Oh? Nomu, get a kid."

Before any of them could even react, the black figure, apparently called a Nomu, dashed out, grabbing Kaminari by the neck and returned to Shigaraki's side. Kaminari had already snapped out of idiot mode, but was out of power, and was too tired to attack. Shigaraki grabbed the boy by the neck, his index finger raised.

Kaminari didn't dare move. He had heard what Midoriya had to say about his quirk, and he didn't want to be decayed just yet.

"Let's play a game, shall we? We'll beat you to a pulp, and you won't make a single sound. One small peep from you and we'll turn on your little friends. Take more than thirty seconds to get up, and your friend goes poof."

"Akatani-chan! No!" Asui yelped from her position on the ground.

But it was too late.

The Nomu smashed his hands into Midoriya, the concrete beneath his feet crumbling as the Nomu forced Midoriya into the ground.

Shigaraki gave the signal, and the students sighed as the villains slowly backed away.

"Akatani!" Yaoyorozu yelped, and everyone looked in the direction she was looking.

Embedded in the ground, was Midoriya, face down, in a crater on the ground.

"Thirty seconds, brat!" Shigaraki cackled, as Midoriya pushed himself out of the hole, bleeding from several injuries, but he just looked back at Shigaraki with a deadpan expression on his face.

The Nomu struck again, bashing Midoriya's face into the ground as it placed a foot on his back, before snapping Midoriya's arm cleanly.

Todoroki watched on emotionlessly as Midoriya peeled himself out of the ground, facing Shigaraki once again.

The Nomu stuck.

Midoriya got back up.

Rise and repeat.

"Stop it! Leave him alone!" Uraraka yelled, on the verge of tears.

"Don't worry, we won't kill him just yet." Shigaraki sneered, "He's such fun to play with….. it would be a pity if he died now."

Kirishima wanted to dash into the fray, but Shigaraki just put his finger up and wiggled it patronisingly, "Nope. You move, he dies." He tightened his grasp around Kaminari's neck, as Kaminari tried to suck in some air while his gag reflex was on the urge of activating from the grip against his windpipe.

The cycle kept going on and on, until suddenly, they all heard a voice.

"Have no fear! For I am here!"

Yagi emerged from the door, just in time for him to see the Nomu smash Midoriya's body into the ground. He immediately slammed into the hulking beast, sending both it and him hurtling down into the plaza. Aizawa had finally cleared a route back up to the stairs, and he just blinked as the Number One hero and the Nomu flew over his head.

* * *

Not getting his head bashed into the concrete had done wonders for his health. However, he did get a pretty nasty slash under his right eye from when he had blinked, and a man with a knife quirk and rushed him. He was able to dodge most of the attacks, but another villain had froze his foot to the ground and he was slashed right under his eye.

He ran up the stairs, finding Shigaraki with his hand on Kaminari's throat. Some of his students were there, a bit bruised up, but generally unharmed. Thirteen had a huge hole along their back, and Shoji was helping them up. There was a large crater on the ground, for some reason, but Aizawa assumed it was from the Nomu and was content to ignore it to focus on the hand obsessed villain.

Until he realised that something at the centre of the crater was moving.

"Ten more seconds, brat." Shigaraki's voice was heard.

Then he recognised the mop of green hair stained with blood slowly standing up, wobbling as he faced the hand man.

_Akatani._

Seeing that Shigaraki wasn't focussed on him, Aizawa struck, his eyes burning from his constant use of Erasure, and lunged at Shigaraki. He grabbed Kaminari with his capture weapon, and pulled him out of Shigaraki's grasp. Seeing as the electric user was safe, he turned to assess Midoriya.

Aizawa wanted to yell when he saw how bad a state his kid was in. He was bleeding all over, and he was sure arms were _not_ supposed to bend like that. He could see that he had a dislocated a shoulder, and winced as Midoriya yanked his arm and the bone popped back into the socket with a harsh snap. His leg was bent weird, and Aizawa was sure he did not want to know how the heck his problem child was standing like that and not making a single sound.

Just as suddenly as All Might came in, the rest of the teachers came stampeding in, Iida leading the charge. Snipe managed to nick Shigaraki in the hand and legs, before Kurogiri came to teleport them all away, including the Nomu.

Midoriya just blinked at the arrival of the teachers, making no other movement otherwise.

"Eraser, how are the students?" Kan asked.

"I'm not sure... physically, Akatani's the worse that I've seen here. I think some of the missing students have been scattered in the USJ." Aizawa replied, guilty that he wasn't fast enough to protect his students.

Kaminari sunk to his knees, gasping for breath.

"He just... kept punching him... and he kept getting up..." Kaminari kept on mumbling, somewhat traumatised. "How... his face didn't even change... it was like he was beating a robot that didn't even feel it..." Shigaraki had him in his grasp. He had gotten the best view of the Nomu torturing the poor kid as a part of a sick game.

"Akatani! What happened to you!?" Yamada screeched, as he carefully examined Midoriya from head to toe.

"The Nomu beat me." Midoriya replied, before coughing up a mouthful of blood right on Yamada's shoes, "Sorry. I got blood on your shoes."

"Akatani. I don't care about my shoes. Are you okay!?" Yamada carefully placed his hands on Midoriya's shoulders.

The boy just looked at Yamada and replied, "I'm alive."

Bakugou was the next to unfreeze. "You fucking idiot! "I'm alive" is not a valid response, you fucker!"

"He was so manly... but that was scary..." Kirishima gasped, as Sero had unconsciously latched onto him. Uraraka was crying alongside Dark Shadow, as Asui and Tokoyami tried, not that it helped much, to console them.

"Does it hurt anywhere?" Yamada tried to asked, accidentally activating his quirk, but Aizawa silenced him in time.

Midoriya shook his head.

Nezu was already calling for ambulances, and Maijima, Yaji, Kayama and Kan had already retrieved the students who had been teleported away.

"Alright. Do you have any injuries?" Yamada tried again. There had to be a way to phrase a question to get a response.

"My right arm is broken along the ulna and radius. My left shoulder was dislocated but I already fixed it. My right kneecap is popped and I believe I have a sprained ankle and some shrapnel in my left leg. I also think I have a few broken ribs, but I'm not too sure. My face is... bleeding I think. I can't check..."

Yamada, and all the other students and teachers who had started crowding around the lone injured boy, looked at the injured boy in horror as Midoriya proceeded to poke and prod his stomach and rubs. Kirishima and Kaminari were screeching, and Yaoyorozu had panicked and made a whole batch of bandages. Aizawa had carefully yanked his hand away before he could make his injuries any worse. "Don't do that. You'll aggravate your injuries."

"Sorry."

Midoriya sounded even more tired than before. The blood loss must be getting to him.

Aizawa sighed, and Midoriya turned to face him, "You're bleeding."

He made an attempt to wipe the blood that was trickling down his face, but ended up falling from his broken leg. Aizawa caught him in time, cradling the still-far-too-light boy against his chest. "Tch. Take care of yourself first."

"Sorry."

The siren if the ambulance wailed in the distance.


	10. Chapter 10 - Dead and Alive

"You said you were interested in Shinsou, weren't you, Aizawa?" Snipe asked. He was 1-C's homeroom teacher, and Aizawa did ask him to keep an eye on the brainwashing quirked child. They were currently in the staff room, doing paper work. UA was shut down for a few days because of the villain attack, and they were very lucky that _Midoriya was acting very much like he wasn't injured so the press didn't manage to get much about the extent of his real injuries._

Aizawa nodded. He had been dragged to the cafeteria once by Yamada, past the 1-C classroom. He had noticed that Shinsou was lying on his table, much like Midoriya was, sleeping through lunch. He did wonder if that was a one time thing or he just never ate lunch in the first place. He did also hear a few pretty nasty rumours from the General Education department, saying how weird and creepy Shinsou was with that dead expression he always wore.

"Well... you say Akatani is very... void of expressions, right?"

Aizawa nodded. That was a very, very nice way of saying that he literally didn't feel anything except that he was useless and expendable.

He didn't really want to talk about his problem child now. The poor boy had passed out during treatment, and Shuzenji couldn't heal him because he never ate much. They had to put him on an IV drip just so he had enough nutrients for Shuzenji to slowly heal him. Apparently, Midoriya's self diagnosis was entirely correct. Aizawa didn't want to know how he knew where every single injury of his was located.

"Let's just say… Shinsou is similar. He's _usually_ quiet, never speaks unless spoken to, doesn't interact, never shows emotions whatsoever."

Aizawa sighed. The other kid he had to take an interest in just had to be another problem child.

"You said usually."

"Yeah. He got mad once. Someone took his notebook."

Aizawa raised an eyebrow. "Got mad… how?"

"Well… as far as I know, I rushed out to the USJ and let the class finish their classwork. Shinsou always has this really old notebook that he brings around everywhere, but he never uses it, or even opens it. There are really messy scrawls on the cover, like that of a toddler trying to write."

Aizawa raised his eyebrow at that detail.

"So they had finished work while we were out, and this student with an air quirk grabbed his notebook just when i got back to class to dismiss them. Shinsou flew into a rage, snatched the book back, and hissed at him. The other student just grumbled that he shouldn't be attached to an inanimate object, and Shinsou just yelled at him that the notebook was his little brother's and he had no right to touch it. He can can be surprisingly scary if he wants to."

Aizawa rubbed his head, unconsciously tracing the new scar he had obtained at the USJ. "Isn't he an only child?"

"Well… adopted, if the records mean anything. He's been transferred around quite a bit, so he shouldn't have formed such a strong bond with anyone who's fostering him."

"So… let's say he had gotten attached to someone. Any idea who?"

"I saw the name on the notebook before he stomped out in a rage. It said Midoriya Izuku."

Aizawa felt his heart clench. The kid who went missing three years ago.

_How long did Shinsou know the kid? How long has he been harbouring all his emotions close to his heart?_

* * *

"Did you see how we were on screen for a second?" Hagakure pipped up. "I was barely seen at all!"

"All the channels made a huge deal out of it." Kaminari grinned, his sharp teeth visible.

"I was really surprised." Kirishima said, "I didn't expect us to get that much attention."

"Can you blame them? The hero course that pumps out pro heroes were attacked." Jiro stated, sighing as she twirled an earphone jack between her fingers.

"Who knows what would have happened if the teacher's hadn't come." Sero sighed. He had spent quite a bit of time tangled in his own tape, being a liability.

"None of them mentioned Akatani though… " Uraraka sighed, just as the door opened.

"Akatani! What are you doing here? Are all your injuries healed?" Iida asked when he saw the green haired student entering the classroom and taking his seat, waiting for Aizawa to enter.

"Most of them. My chest is still bruised but I didn't want to miss any lessons. Skipping lessons will make me more of a burden." Midoriya replied.

Iida really wanted to pull the boy into a hug, if not for the fact that his ribs were bruised. He wasn't one to show affection physically, but he really, really disliked how Midoriya just felt like he was the least worthy person to be alive on the entire earth. The fact that the villains knew him, knew exactly how to manipulate him, and just _laughed _when the Nomu pummelled the poor boy again and again, was one thing. The boy had clearly seen the dark side of the world way too soon. Iida himself already heard about the horrors of the world, but it was one thing to hear his brother telling him about the villains. He didn't know what to feel when he saw Midoriya standing up with all his limbs twisted in the wrong directions.

Everyone was in the class, except for Mineta.

Aizawa entered, and said, "Alright. We missed a lot of time. Let's get straight to the point. The UA Sports festival is drawing close."

"A super normal school event!" Kirishima, Ashido and Kaminari cheered.

"Is it even okay for the school to hold a school event so soon after an incident like this? Especially one so publicised?" Jiro asked.

"What if they try to sneak in again? They already did it once, and they proved that it was possible." Ojiro asked

Aizawa sighed, "This would show that UA's crisis management system is rock solid if we hold the event. Security will be increased by five times that of previous years, so we should be safe. We were lucky that only Thirteen and Akatani had any serious injuries. Because of how he … reacts, everyone just thinks he had a sprained ankle, so UA hasn't been in too much trouble because they think we managed to protect out students."

He turned to address Midoriya, "While I say that, that does not mean I condone your actions. Your plan surely brought the teachers to the rescue a lot earlier, so good job on that. But I'm sure you thought that self sacrifice was the best way to protect your classmates, but they could have killed you."

"It doesn't matter whether I'm alive or not."

"Of course it matters, shit head!" Bakugou whirled around and screeched. "I swear if you end up dying before we get out of UA I'll find you and kill you myself!"

"Killing is not the actions of a future hero, Bakugou!" Iida spoke up.

"SHUT UP EXTRA!"

The entire class erupted into chaos, but Aizawa's eyes glowed red, and everyone immediately shut up.

"The UA sports festival is an important event. It won't be stopped because of some villains breaking it. It has replaced the Olympics and is a possible way for students to transfer into the hero course from that." Aizawa stated, "That being said, I believe Mineta has some things to say."

The purple haired student walked in, and inhaled, before speaking, "I originally wanted to be a hero so I could be seen as cool. After seeing Akatani getting so brutally injured…. I decided that I can't do this. I don't want to be a hero if this is what it entails."

"Sorry."

"No. Akatani, it's not your fault. I'm not suited for this. It's my decision." Mineta gave a small smile, "I'll be transferring to the General Education course after the Sports Festival."

* * *

Aizawa found that the entire class was fussing over Midoriya, in their own ways.

Iida had left a whole pack of granola bars under Midoriya's table, saying that a juice pack wasn't enough, and the granola bars would give him more than enough energy to last throughout the day. Asui had also packed en extra yoghurt for him.

Apparently, it was slightly colder, or someone caught the flu and passed it to Midoriya, because he had been sneezing a lot that day.

Yaoyorozu had made a blanket for him during lunch to drape over his shoulders while he was sleeping, and Jiro had slipped Midoriya an old music player with headphones under his desk. Dark Shadow liked to rest on Midoriya's head as he did his work, and Tokoyami, Sato and Shoji made it a point to pull the other students away from Midoriya when they began crowding too closely to him.

Bakugou was noticeably nicer to Midoriya, called him Akatani instead of extra. Ashido had grabbed Kaminari, Sero and Kirishima, and they held conversations beside Midoriya, occasionally letting him answer questions, never letting the conversation drop as they hopped from topic to topic. The others liked to brush against Midoriya, Uraraka, Ojiro and Hagakure especially, as if reminding him that they were all still there.

He found it endearing, really. He was hoping that at this rate, they would be able to easy the boy out of his emotionless, doll-like state.

* * *

"What's going on outside?!" Hagakure asked as Uraraka stood in the doorway. They were ready to leave, but they didn't realised that their door was blocked by a huge crowd of students until just now. Aizawa had decided to be lazy and just mark his papers in the classroom instead of the staffroom.

Iida raised an arm robotically, "What business do you have with Class 1-A?"

"Scouting the enemy. Duh. We made it out of the villain attack. There's no point in doing stuff like that. Out of my way, extras." Bakugou glared at the crowd and growled.

"Stop calling people extras when you don't know them!" Iida protested, waving his arms frantically.

"Oh? This is the famous Class 1-A?" A blond made his way to the classroom entrance, "You guys are way too arrogant for your own good. Class 1-B is so much better than you guys."

Everyone turned looked at the blonde.

"Hey! Monoma! Why did you leave me behind!" A guy with some sort of mask and very light grey hair popped up, and pushed his way through the crowd, "I'm from Class 1-B next door! I heard ya fought villains so I came to hear about it! Don't get so full of yourself!"

"Tch. Get out of my ways, extras. I want to go home." Bakugou hissed.

"Shh. He's here."

"Who?"

"Shinsou."

"Let's get out of here."

The crowd of students got thinner, and everyone turned to the newcomer who had just arrived. He had purple fluffy hair, sticking in every direction. A notebook stuck out of his pocket, and Aizawa immediately recognised him.

Shinsou Hitoshi.

Bakugou growled, "I remember you."

Shinsou tilted his head slightly, before saying, "You're from Aldera."

"You're the one that everyone says was creepy and weird in middle school."

"Oh? If I recall, I never attended your school." Shinsou replied blankly.

Aizawa could definitely see the similarities between Shinsou and Midoriya. Both of them looked equally _dead inside._

"Tch. You have no idea. Everyone says you're the creepy fucker who was friends with the quirkless kid that disappeared. Said you were a villain. Honestly, given so many rumours, I was expecting worse."

Shinsou's eyebrow twitched at the "quirkless kid" statement.

"What the heck were you doing in my school?" Bakugou growled.

"I was visiting my little brother."

"Like hell. We were both first years. Your 'little brother' wouldn't be in there." Bakugou snarled.

"Just for the record, my little brother was two weeks younger than me." Aizawa could tell that small hint of emotion that glinted in Shinsou's eyes when he said that, fulled with sadness, emptiness, and guilt.

"You seem really arrogant. Are all the students in the hero course like that too?"

The tired pro hero noticed how subtly Shinsou managed to steer the conversation away, as everyone tried to tell him and everyone else that it was just Bakugou being Bakugou.

"You're from General Education, huh? Not bad." Monoma grinned.

Shinsou ignored him, and faced Bakugou. "Quite a few people applied to General Education or other courses because they didn't make it into the hero course. I'm sure you already know that the school left us a chance. Depending on the Sports Festival, they'll consider our application into the Hero Course."

Bakugou growled, and stuck his hand out, explosions dancing along his palm. Shinsou caught his arm before it got too close to his face, and he growled slightly, "Oh. You're the one who exploded my brother's notebook."

That sudden movement made the notebook fall out of his pocket, and Shinsou immediately turned his attention back to the book he dropped.

"Who the heck is your brother anyway!?" Bakugou hissed.

* * *

Aizawa saw Midoriya's breath hitch. He had been standing behind Uraraka and Iida this entire time, not making a single sound or movement until then.

He saw Midoriya's eyes widen, his eyes suddenly brighter than he had ever seen him with.

He had an expression of absolute shock on his face, and Aizawa traced his line of sight to see who he was looking at.

_Shinsou Hitoshi._

Midoriya clutched at his head, unconsciously covering his grey eye as he trembled in pain. His remaining eye was focused on Shinsou, who didn't seem to have seen the boy yet, with his focus still on Bakugou.

Good. Aizawa could still fix this. He just needed to get Shinsou away from Midoriya first, and try to figure out what had triggered the green haired boy to act so… unnaturally.

Midoriya knew he should have more memories from before his time with the villains. But every time he tried to dig them up, it hurt too much, so he let it be.

* * *

All his suppressed memories came flooding back to him like a broken dam.

_His teachers, his students, everyone's laughing and mocking, them telling him to kill himself, telling him he was useless and worthless. He remembered each injury and bruise he got from people pushing him down the stairs, using their quirks on him, kicking him, punching him, spilling stuff on him._

_He remembered his best friend. The purple fluffy haired boy who he had met when they were five and were practically glued to each other until their fifth grade, when his friend had been forced to move._

_He remembered to good times they had together, laughing, playing together, writing letters, laughing at the jokes on the letters he received, furrowing his brow in concentration as he tried to draw his friend in his future hero outfit, him crying and grinning from ear to ear when he noticed that his friend had scratched out a few words in his latest letter and managed to figure out what it was._

_He remembered writing one final letter and leaving it on his desk._

_He remembered letting himself fall off the roof of his school building._

_He remembered his name being called before he had crashed head first into the ground._

_Shinsou Hitoshi._

_Gods, he had probably hurt his best and only friend with that little stunt of his. And he didn't even die from his attempted suicide!?_

Midoriya fell backwards as his legs gave out under him, clutching head even harder as he leaned against the teacher's table.

Shinsou looked towards the source of the noise, and the expression on his face was one that mirrored Midoriya's perfectly. His voice was stuck in his throat, as his grasp on Bakugou's hand loosened.

"I…Izu…?" He managed to choke out.

He eyed the notebook warily, before looking right at Shinsou, "You... they said you died..."

Everyone jumped when Midoriya spoke. That had been the first thing he had ever said willingly.

"... what.. ?" Shinsou just sounded downright confused, like he couldn't believe what he had seen. "I thought... after what you did..."

"Why?" Midoriya looked at Shinsou, who was still looked like he had seen a ghost.

They noticed that the shorter green haired boy was crying.

"You… remember…. me? Why!? Why didn't you forget about me like I told you to!? After I hurt you!?"


	11. Chapter 11 - Reunion

Class 1-A, Aizawa, Monoma and Tetsutetsu felt like they had just walked into some very, very personal. Kendo, Tokage, Kodai and Shiozaki had come over to take a look, and they were currently staring at the lone General Studies student as he looked at Midoriya.

Uraraka bent down to try to help Midoriya up, and Shinsou yelped, "Don't touch him unless you're in his line of vision! He'll -"

It was too late. Midoriya jumped at the contact and bashed his head against the table with a loud bang, startling Aizawa and he dropped his pen as Midoriya clutched his head harder.

"You little fucker! What did you do to him!?" Bakugou roared, grabbing Shinsou's collar. Shinsou didn't even seem to care, still looking stunned as he gazed at Midoriya's crying, vulnerable form.

"What... what did they do to you, Izu?" Shinsou gasped.

Midoriya was always emotional. He cried at the smallest thing, even though he tried to reign his tears in. So to see Midoriya so sad, so guilty, all his negative emotions rolling off him like waves of a tsunami and crashing into Shinsou full force. He was a lot more sensitive to Midoriya's emotions, since he knew the boy since they were kids and he had to be able to pick up even the slightest signs of negativity. The boy could be surprisingly good at hiding his true emotions, making you think he was just slightly down when instead he was breaking down inside.

"Why!? Why do you even care about someone as useless and worthless as me!?" Shinsou's heart broke when he heard Midoriya's voice.

Bakugou's grip on Shinsou immediately loosened as he looked back at Midoriya with an angry expression of shock etched onto his face.

"Useless!? What do you mean useless?! You're not useless Izu! You never were and you'll never be useless!" Shinsou replied, clenching and unclenching his fists in frustration.

"You saw what I did! I…hurt you!" He hiccupped,"You're not even real! I'm just hallucinating right now! I can't even see properly now?!"

Everyone turned towards Midoriya.

_He seems so hell bent on convincing himself that Shinsou was just an illusion of his own mind…. why?!_

"Why do you still care so much!? I couldn't even die right! I'm just a quirkless, worthless Deku! Why didn't you forget about me like I told you to in that letter!?" Midoriya cried.

"I can't forget. I can never forget. How can I forget the first and only friend I ever made!? The only person who didn't judge me based on my quirk?! The only person who saw me for who I was instead of my quirk!?" Shinsou himself was close to crying, "You're the only one who treated me like a proper human instead of a tool to be used and throw away or some sort of future villain!"

"Why - " Midoriya was interrupted when Shinsou spoke.

"I'm sorry! I'm sorry I left! I'm sorry I didn't notice things getting worse for you! I'm sorry I was too late to save you! I'm sorry I didn't come fast enough before they drove you to… _that_!"

Shinsou hastily wiped his eyes. _Dammit, he wasn't even in the Hero Course yet and he was crying?_

"Why!? Why… why are you so nice?! Why do you even care so much in the first place?"

Shinsou gulped when Midoriya looked at him with his remaining left eye, burning with sadness, guilt, insecurity and anger.

"Everyone is the same! Kids or adults! No one cares about me. The teachers hate me, my classmates treat me like I'm nothing! And they're right! I'm worthless! I hurt my best friend and I didn't even die from it! I should have died. I should have. Why -"

"Izu! Stop thinking like that! I care! Isn't …. " Shinsou's voice cracked, "Was I not good enough? Where did I go wrong… why can't you understand that some people just care about you?!"

"My best friend saw me _die_! I don't deserve anything!" Midoriya screeched. "I'm a failure! I tried so hard to ignore them all, but I couldn't even do that! People aren't nice for no reason! People are like that. They're only nice because they want something, and when they get it they'll throw you away!" Midoriya's voice just sounded so sad, so broken, that it took all of Aizawa's willpower to not give the smaller boy a hug, seeing how badly he reacted to Uraraka.

"You know what I want?!" Shinsou's voice cracked when he said that, and he looked away, hand unconsciously reaching up to rub his neck, "I just want my little brother back."

Everyone blinked.

_Just what did Midoriya Izuku have to do with Akatani Mikumo?_

Midoriya recognised the familiar gesture.

_Toshi liked to do that…_

He remembered that glint in Shinsou's eyes whenever he tried to protect and reassure the green haired boy. He recognised that sad, gloomy presence that Shinsou tried to hide so badly whenever he saw Midoriya being self deprecating. That odd twitch in his fingers right before Shinsou reached out to ruffle his hair gently.

His eyes trailed down to the notebook that had fallen out of Shinsou's pocket. It had opened up, on the page with a purple, grey and black messy scrawl, alongside another piece of paper that was neatly folded in half.

"You…. still kept the notebook…. I gave you!?"

"…. yeah…."

He carefully looked at Midoriya, and stretched out his arms, "Come here."

Midoriya carefully stood up, and shakily walked towards Shinsou, before lunging, wrapping his arms around Shinsou tightly, both of them falling to the ground.

"You're… you're real…. you're alive….you're not dead…"

"Yeah. I'm real, Izu." Shinosu carefully moved so he was supporting himself with his arm without shifting Midoriya.

With that, Midoriya burst into tears.

"I'm so sorry, Toshi! I'm sorry you saw me jump off the building! I'm sorry I tried to kill myself!" He wailed, as he buried his face into Shinsou's chest and cried.

Aizawa felt his heart break. _His problem child tried to what now?! And Shinsou saw it?! Gods, both of them were emotionally traumatised._

"Shh. It's fine. We're both here now." Shinsou rubbed Midoriya's back, inwardly seething when he could feel Midoriya's ribs.

_What the heck!? Who the hell was starving him!?_

He tried to remain calm as he continued to reassure Midoriya.

He could feel tears welling in his eyes.

_Izu's alive. _

That's all the cared about. Who the hell cares if the entire hero course saw him sitting on his butt crying? Heck, the world could see him crying and call him a villain for all he cared.

Midoriya continued clinging to Shinsou like a koala as he cried his eyes out.

Kan and Snipe had appeared in the door way for no reason, no doubt they heard the ruckus and came over to take a look. Aizawa couldn't see past Snipe's mask, but he was sure his face was exactly the same as Kan: Absolute shock that Midoriya was crying, initiated contact with someone, and actually spoke on his own accord.

"I'm sorry. I gave up."

"Stop apologising, Izu. It's my fault. I should have visited earlier. I promised I would kick everyone's butts for you but I didn't."

"NO! It's not you!" Midoriya cried, "You're the only person who ever cared about me. Ever! Everyone hates me except for you!"

Everyone's heart clenched. _Whatever had the poor kid gone through!?_

"What about your new classmates? Are they hurting you?" Shinsou glared at Bakugou, "I don't care if you're in the hero course. If you dare to even lay a finger on him - "

"I don't know." Midoriya's voice was scratchy, "They're not hurting me or anything…. but I don't know if they care about me or not."

Pretty much the entire class deflated. Midoriya had been so emotionally stunted that he couldn't even feel love when it was practically thrown in his face.

"You…. still care…. right?!" Midoriya croaked, his voice desperate as he physically and emotionally tried to cling to Shinsou. "I'm still….. you still want me as a brother…? Even though I'm a mistake and don't deserve to exist...Even though I'm a failure at everything - "

"You idiot. Stop saying that." Shinsou didn't hesitate to shift and sit up, ruffling Midoriya's hair with one hand as he wrapped the other around the green haired boy. Midoriya was still tucked into his chest and Shinsou placed his head on Midoriya's head, pulling him closer, "You silly little brother. You're the best thing that ever happened to me. You better not forget that."

Midoriya burst into tears again and cried his heart out.

* * *

It finally clicked in Aizawa's mind.

Green hair. Green eyes. Freckles. Quirkless.

_Little brother._

Akatani Mikumo was Midoriya Izuku.

Midoriya was quirkless. He was bullied. He found a friend in Shinsou, a brother who understood him. A person who tried to stand up for him.

_Shinsou had left._

Aizawa wanted to blame Shinsou, blame him for leaving and leaving Midoriya to suffer on his own.

But he knew that was irrational.

According to what Bakugou had said, Shinsou was twelve when he visited. Midoriya was twelve when he attempted suicide. He was being fostered by people, and he had a quirk that people perceived as villainous. No doubt he was being transferred all over the place by the system when they decided that they were sick of Shinsou or didn't want to associate themselves with him. Shinsou was too young at that time to make a choice, to have a say in _anything_ the system did.

The minimum age for taking the train on his own was twelve.

That meant that Shinsou had been forced to wait, who cared how long, that was still too long for Aizawa's liking, to be able to visit.

And when he was finally able to, it had been too late.

Midoriya had committed suicide.

And Shinsou had been there to witness it.

Midoriya had given up.

That was why there was a huge puddle of blood on the ground.

_Shinsou had been broken._

The League of Villains had kidnapped him. Aizawa had no idea why Shinsou didn't know that. But that didn't matter.

They tried to break Midoriya further. They saw Midoriya's connection with Shinsou, and pulled the out the worst card.

_Telling him Shinsou was dead. Reinforcing that thought, slowly convincing Midoriya that he was worthless and couldn't even protect his one and only friend._

They had completely shattered whatever was left unbroken in Midoriya, and smashed all the broken pieces to dust.

Aizawa thought it was so completely illogical for Midoriya and Shinsou to be so emotionally attached to each other. They treated each other like they were the entire world, and broke down completely and shut themselves out from the rest of the world when the other was gone.

He hadn't seen the extent of it.

According to Midoriya, Shinsou had been the only person who cared about him.

According to Shinsou, Midoriya was the only person who understood him.

In the fifteen years the two boys had lived, they were pushed away, kicked down by the rest of the world, trapped by the shackles of prejudice that had threatened to suffocate them completely.

They tried to free themselves when they met each other. Getting hopelessly attached to the only person who was willing to give them attention, love and care that they had been denied for their entire lives.

The world chained them up again when Shinsou had been forced to move away.

The shackles around them grew stronger, so strong that they eventually dragged Midoriya in to the deep, murky depths.

_He tried to kill himself. Shinsou had been dragged down as well when he witnessed the loss of his friend._

He didn't know the whole story. But that was what he had deduced from the entire scenario and the limited context he had of everything. Both of them were emotionally stunted since young, and clutched at the only person that gave them comfort.

_They were just kids. They didn't deserve to go through this._

Midoriya had stopped crying, and Aizawa had noticed that was because he had fallen asleep, still clinging tightly to Shinsou, who didn't even seem to want to move from that uncomfortable position on the floor. Both of them were tangled with each other, and Shinsou was crying as well as he hugged Midoriya for all he was worth, burying his face in Midoriya's hair, not caring that sixty percent of the hero course first years, as well as three teachers, were staring at them, looking completely dishevelled.

Aizawa was going to get ahold of that damn orphanage that was housing Shinsou, if that was the last thing he did.

No one was going to stop him.

Not Nezu, not Kayama, Snipe, or Kan.

Not even Yamada.


	12. Chapter 12 - Beginnings of a new start

"Um…." Shinsou managed to say when he calmed himself enough as he looked at the three remaining heroes. The teachers finally managed to chase all the nosy students ("Ashido out. You too Kaminari, Bakugou I don't know what's your connection to Midoriya but please get out) out of the classroom for them to deal with this delicate matter, giving Shinsou space so it wouldn't be so awkward with thirty pairs of eyes staring at him.

"I thought you're an only child." Snipe asked. He knew about Shinsou was in the system, but he just wanted to confirm some things. It was ... weird that he was Midoriya's emotional trigger, given the middle schools they went to and Shinsou's apparently being in the system since he was six (that was a required field to fill in when Shinsou had applied to UA. Foster homes and stuff like that were really messy and annoying to deal with).

"I secretly decided to adopt him when we were five. Then he found out that I treated him like a little brother and accepted it when we were eleven." Shinsou replied, his arms still wrapped tightly around Midoriya as if he was still trying to convince himself that yes, this was real, Midoriya Izuku was alive, and he was currently being very clingy and unlike himself. He didn't care his homeroom teacher was there,

Aizawa's eyebrow twitched. Five years old. That's very a long time.

Yeah, he was really going to speak to that orphanage. They needed more time together.

Shinsou had to end up taking Midoriya to the infirmary, accompanied by the teachers. He carefully placed Midoriya on the bed, before sitting on the bed next to the sleeping boy, who unconsciously curled up and wrapped his arms around Shinsou's arm.

"So…. you wanna explain some things, kid?" Aizawa asked, slumping into the chair beside the bed. Snipe was in the room as well, as well as Yamada. Shuzenji was checking over Midoriya.

"I don't owe you an explanation unless you're taking care of him, Eraser Head." Shinsou mumbled. "I'm not saying anything unless Izu gives permission to."

"Stubborn kid." Aizawa grumbled.

"He has a point though. A lot of this kind of stuff is sensitive." Snipe reasoned.

Aizawa sighed, "Midoriya is being cared for by both Present Mic and I. How do you know my hero identity?"

"Izu and I watched your sports festival reruns, since you're fight quirkless. We found it interesting and you're the only hero that can erase quirks. Let's just say you are our favourite hero and... kinda drove us since there actually was a quirkless-ish hero."

Yamada swore that Aizawa was blushing under his scarf. The two kids he cared for liked him, the underground, moody, homeless-looking, sleepy head, lazy, non-flashy hero, the best out of all the heroes in Japan? It made sense though, Midoriya was quirkless and Shinsou's quirk wasn't directly offensive.

Snipe nodded, turning to the door, "Alright. I'll be in the staffroom if you need anything."

"How… much did you guys guess?" Shinsou asked, keeping an eye on Shuzenji as he checked the bruises under Midoriya's uniform.

"Honestly… this is just pure speculation from both your little outburst. Both of you were bullied for when you were kids, yes?" Aizawa asked.

Shinsou blinked, slowly nodded, reaching out to carefully run his fingers through Midoriya hair. Midoriya squeaked in his sleep, pressed his head against Shinsou's hand.

"You met when you were five, same school?"

"I went to Midoriya's school for some time. Mine was closed… I don't really remember why. I did transfer to his school the following year."

"When were you put into the system?"

"Around that time." Shinsou replied.

Aizawa mentally noted that down, he had been around six years old.

"Why?"

Shinsou shrugged, "My mom killed herself."

Yamada sucked in a breath, as Aizawa's eyebrow twitched. He had to witness not only one _but two suicides?!_

"Alright…. so we understand that you stayed with Midoriya until…. eleven? Twelve? Why'd you move out?" Aizawa asked again. _Why he was being invested in these two problem children, he didn't know._

Shinsou did some mental calculations, before replying, "My foster families had always been around Izu's area until I was about ten. Then I had to move to the neighbouring city."

Aizawa hissed internally. Three years of separation. That was way too long for these two emotionally damaged kids.

He knew enough already. Most of his speculations had been correct. Shinsou gave the details, but they were just to get a brief timeline of what had happened. He was going to have to ask Midoriya, if he was up to it, but that was enough for now.

"Alright…. but why didn't… you tell anyone about it? About him….. doing…. that…." Aizawa groaned internally. He really did have no tact when dealing with kids.

"He told me not to."

All three adults (yes, including Shuzenji) cursed internally. _They truly were problem children._

"Thanks. I think you can go now? Don't you have a curfew?" Aizawa asked.

"I don't think Izu wants me to leave. I don't want to leave either." Shinsou grumbled. Midoriya had latched himself to Shinsou in his sleep again. "If you're going to chase me out…."

"No. We just don't want you to get in trouble with the system." Yamada protested, being surprisingly quiet this whole time, "Do you have a phone?"

"A what now?"

Yamada dug out his mobile phone and showed it to Shinsou, as he watched the boy stare at the device with mild curiosity.

Aizawa wanted to curse again.

_He didn't even know what a phone was!? How the heck was the system treating this kid!?_

"Shinsou, where do you live currently?"

Shinsou gave him his foster family's address, and Aizawa practically ordered Yamada to get over there to tell them what was happening. He would bring Shinsou back to his current home once Midoriya let go of him.

It took about an hour for Midoriya to let go, and Shinsou reluctantly got up from his seat on the bed to follow Aizawa out of the school.

"Alright. When you get back, pack as much stuff as possible. Not the essentials that you use everyday, but try to keep that to a minimum." Aizawa said.

Shinsou raised an eyebrow, "Why?"

"Just listen to your teacher, kid."

"You're not my teacher, Eraserhead-sensei."

"You literally called me sensei."

"…."

* * *

"Nezu, can you bring up anything you can find on Midoriya Izuku? Or just Midoriya in general?" Aizawa asked when he got back to UA.

"Why?" The animal principal grinned, already having his own suspicions.

"Akatani Mikumo is Midoriya Izuku. He attempted suicide in his first year in middle school in Aldera Junior High, before being kidnapped by the League."

Nezu had that smile on his face, but it was visibly subdued with worry. He clicked a few times on his screen, before he chased the hero out.

"Alright, Aizawa. I'll see what I can find. There should be a folder on your desk tomorrow morning."

* * *

"You doing okay, Midoriya?" Aizawa asked.

Midoriya had someone slept through the entire night in the infirmary, and Shuzenji had requested that he stay in the infirmary and just relax. The boy had listened to her, absently scribbling on the paper that she had given him to entertain himself. Aizawa had popped in to check on his problem child.

Midoriya nodded, "Yeah. I'm a bit sore... but I'm fine, I guess. I'm good for lessons."

_At least he's telling us he's sore. That's an improvement._

"Alright. You don't have to come unless you really feel up to it, okay? Don't strain yourself."

Midoriya's face was that of shock, before it melted into a small smile.

"Thank you, Eraser Head-sensei."

That was the first time Aizawa had seen him smile, and it just... fitted him perfectly. That doll-like stare the boy always wore, the plastic mask that never broke, it was disconcerting to say the least. He was just fifteen for goodness sake. He was innately glad that Shinsou had decided to confront the hero course before the Sports Festival. Who knew when those two would have met up?

* * *

"Akatani!" Uraraka and Ashido cheered as Midoriya entered the classroom the next day. Midoriya didn't show as much emotion as he did with Shinsou, but it was infinitely better than his constant emotionless look.

He gave a small smile, "Hi."

"Alright. His real name is Midoriya Izuku, so call him by that from now on." Aizawa said.

"Wait…. so Akatani Mikumo isn't your name? Why'd you use a fake name?" Kaminari asked.

Midoriya's expression hardened, and he ignored the question as he made his way to his seat.

"Idiot. You think he wanted to use a fake name?" Jiro demanded as she smacked Kaminari lightly.

"Any questions about Midoriya's past will not be tolerated. If he feels like it, he will tell you. Stop bothering him. He already has enough problems to worry about. Also, I'm sure you all learnt from the USJ about Midoriya's quirk... or a lack of it foe that matter. Information like that should not leave this classroom at all, understood?" Aizawa grumbled, before starting homeroom.

Meanwhile, Kan had also pulled aside the seven 1-B students to talk about Midoriya, and made them promise not to say a single word about it.

* * *

"Ne.. Aka-…. Midoriya-chan, what is…. your brother like?" Asui asked. Kayama decided that the kids still needed some time to relax after the USJ, and had given them the lesson to do whatever they wanted as long as they didn't blow anything up (Bakugou), get everything stuck (Sero and Mineta), or shock the living watts out of everyone (Kaminari).

"Yeah! He was so manly to stand up to Bakubro!" Kirishima cheered, before Bakugou smacked him, "Don't call me that!"

Midoriya's face immediately lit up, his eyes shining with happiness that completely blew everyone else away.

"Toshi's the best! He's so brave and awesome and his quirk is so cool! You know, when I first met him, everyone didn't like him cause of his quirk! But they when my classmates hit me he stood up to them even though he barely knew me!" Midoriya grinned, "He's always protecting me from my classmates in school! Even though he knows they like to spread bad rumours about him, he doesn't hesitate to threaten that he'll use his quirk to save me, even though he never ever would do that!"

_But what was that about your notebook that Bakugou blew up? _Koda signed. He blinked, realised no one knew sign language, and hastily searched around for paper, but Midoriya grinned, "Don't worry. Toshi and I learnt sign language together! He asked about the notebook that Bakugou-kun blew up."

"I didn't even know you! I only remember this kid just came up to me, said my explosions weren't strong enough to blow up anything, and threw a notebook in my face, so I exploded it just to prove a point!" Bakugou snarled.

"Yeah…. that was my notebook… He had just dumped water on my books and snatched it while I was cleaning up…. Sorry about the confusion. I did tell Toshi I didn't blame you… Sorry…" Midoriya apologised, but Yaoyorozu sighed, "It's not even your fault. Stop apologising."

"Sorry."

"There, you did it again!"

"I'm sorry!"

* * *

Midoriya had been mild the entire day. 1-A was glad that Midoriya was reacting and giving small smiles and frowns and generally showing emotion, but it was... weird. Some of his expressions were slightly forced, and they could tell he didn't really mean it. More like he knew what he was supposed to feel, but wasn't really able to feel it, and was trying to express it in some way and was failing badly.

It wasn't until there was a presence by the door when lunch time came that they saw genuine happiness practically radiating from the smaller boy.

"Er... can I ...um... speak to - "

"TOSHI!" Midoriya squealed, literally jumping out of his seat and crashing into Shinsou with his arms outstretched. Shinsou just blinked as Midoriya wrapped his arms around Shinsou's neck and legs around his torso like a koala. It did not help that he was ridiculously light, and he was clinging to Shinsou like a monkey on a very purple palm tree.

"Izu. I can't walk like this."

"Sure you can, Toshi. You just have to try!"

Shinsou sighed, before ruffling the smaller boy's head.

"Hi Shinsou!" Uraraka greeted. Shinsou gave a curt nod in reply, not knowing how to interact.

Midoriya reached out his hand to ruffle Shinsou's hair in turn, and Shinsou pouted. He liked having his hair ruffled, dammit, but not in front of Midoriya's class.

"Come on, lunch?"

Asui and Uraraka were about to protest that Aizawa usually left a juice pack for Midoriya, but the smaller boy just smiled and nodded, before dragging the taller boy out of the classroom, "I bet you just spend your lunches sleeping, huh? I'm sure you don't even know where the cafeteria is."

"Shut up."

"Nope!"

The entire 1-A class was silent upon seeing how easy it was to convice Midoriya to eat.

"We should invite Shinsou to have lunch with us!" Kaminari yelled.

"Yeah! Anyone who helps Midoriya is good in our books!" Ashido cheered.

"Shinsou's an honorary 1-A member for helping Midoriya so he can eat with us! He's so manly!" Kirishima grinned.

* * *

The very next day, right before lunch, they had brought it up with Midoriya. His face immediately lit up, and with a small shout "Really! I'll go get him!" he ran out of the classroom, and found himself outside 1-C.

"Ano…. is Shinsou Hitoshi here?" Midoriya asked meekly, as he fidgeted with his fingers.

"Eh? Who are you? Why do you want to talk to him? Don't you know he's really weird?" A student asked questioningly.

Midoriya cocked his head in confusion.

"He doesn't show emotions and flares up at the dumbest things." Another student pipped up.

Midoriya hissed. _How dare they say that about him!_

Shinsou wasn't even aware of the conversation taking place at the door. He was glaring at the calculus question that his teacher assigned, as if that would suddenly make him able to solve it, completely unaware that the lessons were over.

"Eh….. Toshi!" Midoriya immediately lit up when he saw Shinsou's fluffy hair behind the General Education students.

His voice startled Shinsou out of his thoughts, and he turned to the door, "Izu? Wait it's lunch time already?"

Everyone left in the classroom jaw dropped that Shinsou had _actually _said something.

He made a move to exit the classroom, and Midoriya leapt at him, latching onto Shinsou as he laughed. "How are you doing, Izu?" Shinsou gave a small smile, ruffling Midoriya's hair as he half-heartedly attempted to detach Midoriya from himself.

"…. is… Shinsou ... smiling?"

Midoriya grinned, "Great! Aizawl-sensei had to force Ashido-san and Kaminari-kun away from me cause they wanted to hug more or something. Everyone else was crying and they were really nice!" Midoriya grabbed his arm as he attempted to drag the taller boy out of the classroom, "Come on! Come meet my classmates! Kirishima-kun keeps saying how manly it was for you to stand up to Bakugou!"

Shinsou blinked, "Eh? Manly?"

"Yeah!" Midoriya gave such a bright smile that it would have made the sun jealous, "They want to meet you too! They've started calling you an honorary 1-A member or something!"

"Wait, he's from the hero course?!"

Shinsou just stared at Midoriya, completely stunned.

_People wanted to meet him?_

"Hello? Toshi?! You in there?!" Midoriya waved his hand in front of Shinsou's face as he seemed to blank out, blinking. Midoriya gave a cheeky grin, and poked Shinsou on the nose, startling the taller boy out of his thoughts.

"Boop! You're it!" Midoriya cackled cheekily as he raced out of the classroom.

"Izu! Get back here!" Shinsou yelled, racing out of the classroom to catch his unofficial little brother, "I told you not to do that!"

"Was that… really Shinsou?" A 1-C student asked, pointing at the door. "Someone please tell me that's an imposter? Because I never thought I would see the day that Shinsou would actually smile."

* * *

Midoriya wasn't even trying to run away from Shinsou. He was just trying to lead the taller boy to the cafeteria.

"No running!" Iida yelled when he saw Midoriya run into the cafeteria, followed by Shinsou. Midoriya skid to a stop, and Shinsou grabbed Midoriya by the back of his collar, like a mother cat would pick up a kitten. He turned Midoriya around with a mock expression of anger on his face, before gently putting the boy back on his feet. His expression changed to that of cheekiness before poking Midoriya's nose.

"Hah. Payback." He grinned victoriously.

Midoriya pouted, before he saw his class. He grinned and dragged Shinsou over to the 1-A table. "This is Shinsou Hitoshi! Toshi! You saw em but never really spoke to em!"

A chorus of hi's later, Shinsou found himself sitting beside Midoriya and Uraraka.

"So, you're in the General Department, huh? How's that?" Kirishima asked.

"Not.. bad I guess…. I don't talk to anyone."

"Huh. That must suck." Ashido protested, "Didn't you make any friends at all?"

"I… don't know? Izu's my only friend, and he was the one that approached me first when we were younger?" Shinsou asked, confused. Midoriya was eating (or trying to) eat some udon, before he eating a few strands and pushed the bowl away, pouting, "You need more friends, Toshi."

"How do you even expect me to make friends when no one even wants to talk to me?" Shinsou deadpanned. "You know how it is."

"That's it!" Ashido yelled, leaning forward (She happened to be sitting right across the table from Shinsou), "We're all going to be your friends-"

"…What…?" Shinsou blinked.

"You need friends. We're you're little brother's friends so you're our friends too!" Ashido replied, smiling.

"I don't think it works like that..." Yaoyorozu sweatdropped.

Shinsou felt really, really awkward. He barely knew anyone, and the last time he talked to Bakugou they left on...odd terms.

Midoriya was perceptive. He caught those thoughts.

"Toshi, that's Yaoyorozu Momo! Her quirk is Creation and she can make anything inorganic. That's Uraraka Ochako and her quirk is Zero Gravity and she can make things float! And that is Iida Tenya and he can ... "

Shinsou gave a small smile seeing Midoriya describe their quirks.

_Did they know he was quirkless?_

He gave Midoroya a small nudge, whispering, "Do they know... that you're... _quirkless_?"

Midoriya nodded, "Mhm! They know!"

"Know what?" Iida asked.

"My... quirk."

"Oh."

"Did you tell them?" Shinsou asked.

Midoriya shook his head, "Nope. Kurogiri told them at the USJ."

"Who?"

"He works for the villains that kidnapped me."

"I'm kicking his butt."

"No you're not!"

"Yes, I am. You can't stop me Izu."

Class 1-A swestdropped at the childish banter between the two teenagers.

"Nope!" Midoriya wrapped his arms around Shinsou's arm, "Now you can't move to fight villains! I win!"

"Tch." It was then Shinsou noticed that one of Midoriya'a eyes were miscoloured. "Your... eye..."

"Oh. They shot a laser at it. I can still see so I'm fine."

The entire 1-A gasped at how casually the boy said that. Getting a laser in the eye _is not_ fine, even if you could still see.

Shinsou was very, very, very much ready to find those damned villains, and give them a piece of his mind. He was glad that the rest of Midoriya's class were accepting of the quirkless boy. He needed more love.

He was also certain that this class (Bakugou included) were ready to commit murder for him, if the expressions on their faces said anything. Bakugou's frown had deepened, Kaminari's smile dropped slightly, Kirishima's arm had hardened, Shoji's mouth on his arm had let out a "tch" and Yaoyorozu and Jiro's expression had turned cold. Uraraka's smile had turned murderous, and Iida's eyes glinted dangerously behind his glasses. Todoroki's cyan eye seemed to glow with anger and even Koda looked downright angry.

Yep. Shinsou was happy that Midoriya had this class. And that Yaoyorozu was in his class. Something told him he was going to need to bubblewrap Midoriya one day and she would be the one happily providing it. And hopefully the rest of the class will aid him.


End file.
